Jean Fritz Quotes

If a book comes from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and author-craft are of small amount to that.

Whether you're writing a book or a song or whatever, you've got to be involved in it. It's got to come from the heart I think...that's what it's all about.

I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.

Forget market or publishers or whatever. Just write with fire and joy, and in my own experience, those are the stories of mine people have wanted to read.

With 'A Northern Light,' I've already heard from teenage readers, teachers, librarians - it's been so gratifying. It's amazing that you can take something that matters so deeply to you and make it matter to someone else.

I would say if you want to write, write what you care about. I think that's the most important thing. I think if you write what you care about, you stand a better chance of having the reader care about your story.

I need to let people know who I am and instead of just trying to make great records, just be honest and make it more personal and make it more passionate, to make records with emotion and not be afraid to express that.

Write about what you care about. If you do that, you're probably going to do your best writing, reach off the page and touch the reader. How are you going to make the reader care if you don't care yourself?

No book that is written for an external purpose is going to be a passionately felt book for the writer or the reader. I don't see the point in doing that.

Tell the story that's in your heart, and don't hold back. Write a book the reader will want to melt into.

I have to have the 'umph.' I've got to feel it, because if it's not getting through to me, the audience sure as hell aren't going to feel it either.

If you make a movie that's close to your heart, it will be close to other people's.

I think it's difficult to be honest about certain aspects of my work without acknowledging that I have experienced or felt or questioned certain of the themes in the books.

In the end all books are written for your friends.

To think about love and passion and political correctness all together, it doesn't work. Art has to go way past the political to be effective.

If one has no heart, one cannot write for the masses.

The only reason to write is from love.

One thing that I don't ever want to do is write something I don't love.

Write what you want to read. So many people think they need to write a particular kind of book, or imitate a successful style, in order to be published. I've known people who felt they had to model their book on existing blockbusters, or write in a genre that's supposed to be "hot right now" in order to get agents and publishers interested. But if you're writing in a genre you don't like, or modeling yourself on a book you don't respect, it'll show through. You're your first, most important reader, so write the book that reader really wants to read.

It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader. If you do not believe in the characters or the story you are doing at that moment with all your mind, strength, and will, if you don't feel joy and excitement while writing it, then you're wasting good white paper, even if it sells, because there are other ways in which a writer can bring in the rent money besides writing bad or phony stories.

People who take books on sex to bed become frigid. You get self-conscious. You can't think a story. You can't think, "I shall do a story to improve mankind." Well, it's nonsense. All the great stories, all the really worthwhile plays, are emotional experiences. If you have to ask yourself whether or not you love a girl or you love a boy, forget it. You don't. A story is the same way. You either feel a story and need to write it, or you better not write it.

In the helter-skelter of this book, I didn't develop my views as theory. In fact, I even believe that efforts of that kind are tainted with ponderousness. Nietzsche wrote "with his blood," and criticizing, or, better, experiencing him means pouring out one's lifeblood. It was only with my life that I wrote the Nietzsche book that I had planned.

Some books make us dream, others bring us face to face with reality, but what matters most to the author is the honesty with which a book is written.

It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader.

The only thing that works with writing is that you care so passionately about it yourself, that you make someone else care passionately about it.