Tananarive Due Quotes

You have to write the story that's at the front of your head. There is no point in trying to write for the market; it won't ring true.

I think the job of writing and literature is to encourage each one of us to believe that we're living in a story.

The best stories in our culture have some sort of subversiveness - Mark Twain, 'Catcher in the Rye.' You provide kids with great stories and teach them how to use the tools to make their own.

As a writer, I was shaped by a desire to write for black people. That things were not being represented. That was my motivating force. That it has become what it has become is shocking to me. I just wanted to be able to take care of my kids.

Write the story you need to tell and want to read. It's impossible to know what others want, so don't waste time trying to guess.

You have to write your own story, your own graph and rhythm.

Write your own stories.

As it pertains to my black womanhood, there's just a lot of ground to cover. There's a lot of stuff to say.

My very first story, I was around 5, and I really just wrote myself. When I was 5, I loved myself so much I gave myself a twin named Tomi. Everything started out fine. But then I didn't write another black character until I was 18.

...I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.

There's just so many great stories in the past that you can know a little bit about, but you can't know it all, and that's where imagination can work.

These 'mistakes' occur in my books for a reason. I have an agenda: I'm secretly trying to inspire kids to create their own stories and comics, and I don't want them to feel stifled by 'perfectionism.'

All fiction becomes autobiographical when the author has true talent.

History releases me from my own experience and jogs my fictional imagination.

I always do make a back story for myself, but I'm not sure how necessary it is. I just like to.

I prefer writing originals.

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

I would like to use stories as a springboard for children to make their own creative responses. I would like to encourage them to express themselves using music, art, film or whatever, and upload it to a website having been inspired by particular stories.

I think one of the keys to better writing is releasing all of your ideas and to not be afraid. Dream big. This could be the greatest novel in the world you know.

I want to be a part of the stories that need to be told.

I tell the stories that are of interest to me.

Part of my job as Children's Laureate is to visit schools and talk about my love of books and stories and encourage them all to do it as well - to read, to write, to never be afraid of their own voice. Because we all have something to say.

I wish I didn't have ever to sign my long name on the cover of a book, and I wish I could write a story that would seem absolutely true to the child who hears it and to myself.

I am a writer, which means I write stories, I write novels, and I would write poetry if I knew how to. I don't want to limit myself.

In every novel, I write about something - a place, an experience, an emotion - with which I'm intimately familiar, but it's also crucial to me that I take on challenges. If write only inside my comfort zone, I'll suffocate.