Ray Bradbury Quotes

I tend to have an endless number of ideas for writing projects. I don't necessarily say that as a good thing. Maybe it's a good thing, but I have ideas for all kinds of projects: contemporary novels, graphic novels, anything that happens to go through my mind.

My novels are all ideas.

I'm not like a Sears Catalog of ideas. I don't have that many ideas. I've more or less written them over the years. Usually, I come up with a situation or a character, and it rattles around in my head until the story or the plot emerges.

A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.

For me, inspiration isn't a sort of spark which lights the fire of the story. It's more like a thread, one of many, which you can tease out of a story once it's written, if you feel so inclined.

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

I have no plans for a future Jemima Shore mystery, but would write one tomorrow if a good idea came to me.

I always say that, for me, writing a book is like a wacky Greyhound bus trip - I know where I'm starting and where I'll end up, but I have no idea what will happen along the way.

I have every sympathy for writers. It's a mystery to me what they do. I can edit. I can cross out and say, 'I'm not saying that' or, 'How about we move this to here? Wouldn't that make that bit of the story better?' But where any of it comes from is beyond me. I will never write a play or a novel.

I'm at the mercy of whatever character comes into my head.

I know it may sound silly, but I think my short stories have a life and identity of their own. They crop up in all sorts of places.

I love telling stories. Creating a character, a world, a whole universe out of nothing. That part I can't get enough of.

My books start almost before I realise it. Once in a while, some accident causes an idea to rise to the surface and say: 'now.'

Stories develop from things I read and also from my own experiences and experiences of people I know.

I'm always saying that my books are not autobiographical because they're not. I can't choose any one scene and say, 'Oh, this is exactly what happened to me!' I just use little snippets of things as a starting point!

Sometimes my lyrics may describe a situation that happened to a friend. Other times, I create a story from the ground up.

I love stories. I just enjoy telling stories and watching what these characters do - although writing continues to be just as hard as it always was.

It's been a while since I've written a novel aimed at the adult market, but I never sit down and say to myself, 'Okay, now I'm going to write something for us old folks.' I get gripped by an idea, and I go where the idea takes me.

I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.

I don't really set out to explore grand themes. I set out to tell a story. And one I have to be able to imagine right through.

I've never been comfortable with the idea of using family and friends in stories. Which is why it takes me longer than something else. Because you make them up out of nothing. Doing that is harder.

When I am writing a story it feels as real as the life I am experiencing off the page. It's an emotional illusion, I guess.

So many stories, and to choose which ones to tell and how to tell them. The words, they will tap me on the shoulder and they will speak to me: 'Tell me! Tell me!' The stories choose me.

If you're a writer, you know that the stories don't come to you - you have to go looking for them. The old men in the lobby: that's where the stories were.

I write short stories when a little idea occurs to me, that I know isn't a part of a novel that will stand by itself and should be concentrated.