Simon Toyne Quotes

There is no gambling like politics.

At thirty-five, having spent over twenty years running varied businesses for my family, I decided to sit down and write my first novel. I had never written anything longer than a couple of pages till then and was foolishly attempting to write a hundred-thousand words.

I didn't have an agent, I didn't have a headshot. I didn't even know if anyone would know where to find me. I just went back to highschool and started playing with my band.

I feel that when I began writing, I had a need to know more about the play before I got into it. I think that's the way I was thinking. But my actual experience is that the best way to find out what the structure is, is by writing the play out laterally. You just have got to be brave enough to start without knowing where you are going.

Making movies is just like betting on horses at the racetrack.

The more freedom I allow myself as a writer to wander, become lost and go into uncertain territory - and I am always trying to go to the more awkward place, the more difficult place - the more frightening it is, because I have no plan.

I think there's a difference between a gamble and a calculated risk.

An author is somebody who writes a story. It doesn't matter if you're a kid or if you're a grown-up, it doesn't matter if the book gets published and lots of people get to read it, or if you make just one copy and you share that book with one friend.

To make it interesting and worth doing, writing a novel has to be a leap into the unknown. I have to be unsure if I can write it; otherwise, I won't want to.

Write a million words before thinking about getting published.

It seemed to me that I could write commercial fiction. I wasn't sure whether I could, or whether I wanted to write serious fiction at that point. So I said, 'Let me try something else,' and I wrote a mystery - but I didn't know much about it.

It may be important to write a book that doesn't come up to what I would like to have rather than to write no book at all.

Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going to happen. You have a broad sense, maybe, but it's this rash leap.

There are a lot of bottlenecks to getting published. Publishers are only one of them. Having the time is another one. Feeling entitled is another one.

I feel there has to be a certain amount of improvisation as I'm writing, which means any idea or any commitment to a project is risky. It involves time; it involves gathering of material, and sometimes it just doesn't work. Sometimes it does. As I'm starting out on a project, I can't tell if it will click or not.

I was directed because I knew I wanted to be a novelist, but I didn't have a very good job or a way of getting published. I found those years to be among the most difficult of my life.

I assume as a writer that most of the time I'm going to fall down and fail.

I never really know the title of a book until it's finished.

Speculation and the exploration of ideas beyond what we know with certainty are what lead to progress.

Being right is overrated! If someone is saying that they're right about the future, that's a claim only a fool would make.

I've heard some writers say things like, 'Well, I'm a professional writer. I only start books I know I can finish.' I look at it maybe the other way: I only want to write books I'm not sure I can write.

So much of writing is like walking down a dark hallway with your arms out in front of you. You bump into a lot of things.

When you start a scene, and you don't really know where you're going to go, that's a roller-coaster.

We don't know if there is a 'Tremors 6.' If there is, we're not sure what that is yet. I know what I would like to see as 'Tremors 6.' Because I've been with this a long time. I have specific desires along those lines. But clearly, we have left the door open for a sequel.

I don't even pay attention to the odds, to be honest with you.