Dana Spiotta Quotes

I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself.

I think one of the reasons I'm so thrilled with writing is because it is an act of reading for me at the same time, which is why my revisions are so sustained.

I love to write, so I think writing would be the next natural step. And if I'm making something that I'm writing, it would also probably make sense to be a producer and have some creative input from that perspective as well. Eventually, I do want to direct, but I want to get comfortable in those two jobs first. I want to dip my foot into this pool before I dive in I guess.

I'm a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don't agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

I had to write about realistic circumstances. That's the way my brain works. And I think that gave me a sort of place in the field.

It's very hard to articulate the things that are important about writing.

I'm not a teacher; I'm not a historian. I'm trying to create a world for my characters.

I'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes.

I write out of my intellectual experience.

In music, you can use metaphors with ease - if a person doesn't understand the parable, they can still enjoy the melody of the music. If, however, a person reads a book and misses the meaning of its metaphors, this will be extremely disheartening for both the reader as well as the author.

I'm not angry; I write about angry characters. When I'm doing that, I'm happy. Just like when I'm writing about Mickey Sabbath being lustful, I'm not feeling lustful; I'm happy.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Writing was something that came easily to me and there's so many great producers who just teach you so much.

I've been writing for a long time.

When you compose, it's like writing. You're like a writer. You just think all the time.

Whether I'm writing scripts or prose, the goal is identical. To give pleasure. Now whether I succeed or not is up for debate, and, mostly, I fail. But I try. I like to make things. It's a way to stay busy during one's ephemeral and confusing life.

The consciousness-expanding drugs - the hallucinogens, such as cannabis, mescaline, LSD, Psylocybin - I think are useful to a writer up to a certain point. That is, they open psychic areas that would not otherwise be available to the writer. But I feel that once these areas have been opened and the writer has reached them, he is able to get back there in the future without the drug.

When I write, I never think of segments as chapters; I think of them as scenes. I always visualize them in my mind. Then I try to get the scene down on paper as closely as I can. That's the one thing that readers don't see - what you have in your mind. The reader can only see what you get on the page.

I think that I've always written about things that are very personal, but initially, I coded everything.

You are going to have to give and give and give, or there's no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.

Books are great for if you want to work on the craft of writing for yourself, or, you know, to write novels or indie films, stuff like that.

If your way of life is writing, then everything that happens becomes a sentence.

The truth is I tried to write for years and I wasn't very good.

I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you're trying to be a writer because it's the only apprenticeship we have, it's the only way of learning how to write a story.

Too often, I think, children are required to write before they have anything to say. Teach them to think and read and talk without self-repression, and they will write because they cannot help it.