Stewart O'Nan Quotes

I try very hard to write the best book I possibly can, every time.

I wanted to see if I could write a good book.

You write a lot of books; you hope you get better.

There are many challenges I face while working on a book. Working within deadlines and schedules is certainly one of the bigger ones for me. I want to create the best possible book I can for my readers with words and pictures - and that takes time to get it just right.

Nobody sits down and says, 'Well, I'm going to write a bad book.' They sit down to write a great book, but it doesn't always turn out like that. The writer may do his best and still write a so-so book, and other times, it just flows easily. But I don't know how you can control that.

You write, hoping to write a good book; that's it.

It's easy to get published once you have written a really good book and the hard part, 99 percent of what you need to worry about, is really finishing it.

I'm not a writer who refuses to talk about a book until I've finished.

I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.

You don't sit up in a cave and write the Great American Novel and know it is utterly superb, and then throw it page by page into the fire. You just don't do that. You send it out. You have to send it out.

My writing is progressing slowly, but at least it's moving forward. I'm sure that's the case. The only problem is that I'm never absolutely certain that what I've written is any good.

I wrote a piece for the school literary magazine that now makes me think: 'My God in Heaven, this is just the worst drivel.'

I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.

It takes me a very, very long time to write a story, to write a piece of fiction, whatever you call the fiction that I write. I just go about it blindly, feeling my way towards what it has to be.

I try to write 1,000 words. Some people say it's not about the quantity but about the quality. I disagree. You need to write a lot in order to figure out what's good and what's crap.

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.

Having reached the halfway mark in the alphabet, my prime focus is on writing each new book as well as I can.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

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.

You can write the best book you can, and that might still not be enough. Appeal isn't something that most writers can't strive for or identify. It's something even the best agents and editors can't always identify.

I believe if you write a great book, the chances are it'll get a great reception.

One of the more interesting things I've learnt since becoming a writer is that if you like the book, you'll generally like the person. It doesn't always work in reverse - there are huge numbers of lovely people out there writing not very good books.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.