Oliver Goldsmith Quotes

The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

I never really like it when other writers talk about coming in behind people and rewriting.

Screenwriting is a much more collaborative effort. When you write a novel, it's just you, with input from your editor.

Writing a book is usually a full-time job that takes years. I didn't have years. So I decided to crowdsource content for the book.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.

I wrote four novels under the name Amy Silver. The first one was commissioned, and I was given basically the whole plot and the characters. They told me what to do, and I went straight away and did it. After that, I continued, and I was coming up with more my own ideas, although they did steer me.

'Lead with LUV' is the first book I've ever done that's just a pure conversation between my coauthor and me.

There's a fairy story called the 'The Shoemaker and the Elves' where this old cobbler keeps leaving leather out overnight and wakes up the next day, and there's a new pair of shoes. Co-authoring is a little like that. You send off the manuscript to your partner, and a few days later, you check your email, and hey, there's more book in here!

I never want to co-write. People never just write a quarter of a book, do they? I don't think you can get your story across.

Creative people feel huge ownership of our content; we want everything to be done ourselves. But in book writing, there's a process: editors, PR people.

I rarely write by myself.

I don't write a book so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me.

There are a number of people without whom I could not have written this book, but I hope you don't hold that against them. They are all fine people, and they had no idea how it would turn out.

No two books come out the same way. Some I write by the seat of my pants; others are planned in minute detail.

In terms of the economics, yes obviously the rise of e-books and how people choose to read books has a big effect on the economics of the game. But whether people are buying them on paper or downloading them there's still some poor wretch in a room who is trying to write a poem, write a story, write a novel. And so my job doesn't change. It's just how people receive it and economic conditions on the ground change, but that doesn't affect what I write.

But how do I get to having to write a book?... It was a mother who bore me, not an inkwell!

Contrary to what people think, I slave over my books.

I have taken as much as six years to prepare a book for writing. There is such a delirium of effort in the production of a book; it's like childbirth. And, like childbirth, one forgets the pains immediately so that when you come to write another one you dare to take it up again. Some precious anesthesia sees you through.

Books are really, really hard to write. They represent a kind of a summit of grappling with what one really has to say

We had so much fun together as friends that I suggested we [with Kate DiCamillo] write a book together.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.

It may take a village to raise a baby, but hell! it takes an army to produce a book.

We'd decided to write a book about two friends. I gave her some coffee and then we sat there not knowing what to do. How do you start writing a book together? So Kate [DiCamillo] got up after about 10 minutes into this endeavor, and said, 'Well, that was fun,' and started to head out the door. I said, 'Wait, wait, wait, no no no,' because I'm a bit more patient.

When I'm blogging, I think book writing is easier and vice versa. Writing is lonely work, and the good thing about blogging is that you have immediate feedback from commenters.