Louis L'Amour Quotes

The best memories on tour are always of kids who tell me they are going to run back to their classrooms and start writing!

I don't procrastinate because I love the English language and the process of storytelling, and I'm always curious to see what will come to me next. If you procrastinate a lot, you might be one who loves having written, but doesn't so much like writing.

I don't stare at a sheet of paper and try to think of a good word to use. I try to see where the story should go.

When I'm writing I just think there's only the page and me and nobody else.

Writing for children is my... that's my medium, you know, and the medium is the picture book, which is a very particular kind of book. I try to give children what I would give anybody, you know. I become interested in something. I find something fascinating. It has to fascinate me, and then I want to give it to them.

Call it vanity, call it arrogant presumption, call it what you wish, but I would grope for the nearest open grave if I had no newspaper to work for, no need to search for and sometimes find the winged word that just fits, no keen wonder over what each unfolding day may bring.

Everyone has early fiction fantasies, but it wasn't until my second child Betsy was born that I allowed the urge to write a novel bubble up.

I think I became a writer because of my love of stories and an inability to stop asking, 'What if?'

I love writing. It's one of my favorite jobs. Of the things I get to do, I love sitting in a room and coming up with ideas, and I love going home and pounding them out.

I always love writing about children.

I think all writers write from the time they're really young, and you just start asking the question, 'What if?'

I always have a story in my head that needs to be written, or at least I think I do. But I usually can't find the time to write it.

I was 12. Our, teacher made us write an autobiography and I realised that I wasn't very interesting. I began to make things up, and that's when I thought maybe I was a writer, or at least a fiction writer.

I keep drawing inspiration from people every day. All of a sudden, something strikes me so hard and dramatically, and then a dream comes - I sit down, cut it off and make a script out of it.

At a certain moment, I decided to write a story. I had no more small children to tell them stories.

At all times, think like a writer, and keep those antennae twitching - that way, you pick up new ideas.

You want to know what makes me tick, I'll tell you what makes me tick. I was a boy growing up in Brooklyn; I read a two-penny magazine called 'The Hawk's Nest.' Nobody entered that nest that didn't leave a little richer and a little wiser. And that 11-year-old boy said, 'Isn't that a wonderful thing.' And that's all there is to it.

I like all kinds of stories, and I usually work on several stories at once. When I run out of gas on one, I start work on the other.

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.

Sometimes I think that novelists suffer from P.C.S.: Perpetual Childhood Syndrome.

If I knew a story page by page before I started writing it, I just wouldn't do it. The process of discovery is really important for my own enjoyment.

Why my interest in writers? Well, I'm one, and many of my friends are writers. I know what it's like to write. I'm interested in the creative process. I'm fascinated by the disparity between who we are on the outside, and what we have bubbling away inside us.

Only a reader can become a writer. Develop a lively intellect and the ability to become interested in anything, no matter how mundane it might seem at first. Look for the story. Develop an eye for detail. Feed your mind and your brain: learn as much as you can about everything you can.

To write, you need to find what you love.

If I just sit here, what am I going to do? I don't have a trade. I don't teach or anything. I just love to make up characters and gradually build a story around them.