Barry Eisler Quotes

You can spend a day in a library and feel: 'Great, I've done a day's work.' But it's only research, not writing.

It’s not just the adage ‘write what you know,’ it’s about gathering up all of the knowledge and experience you’ve collected up to now to help you dive into the things you don’t know.

I've got research, I have my own life experience I can apply, and I have my imagination.

I have always felt that the Internet was a more important research tool for a writer than an artist.

Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.

Read as much as you can, and then sit down and write.

There is no question that creative intelligence comes not through learning things you find in books or histories that have already been written, but by focusing on and giving value to experience as it happens.

One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.

Anything you read can influence your work, so I try to read good stuff.

I like learning things, and I like that writing comics is an excuse to look into new stuff and research and learn new things and hopefully put them in books.

To me, the great joy of writing is discovering. Most writers are told to write about what they know, but I still love the adventure of going out and reporting on things I don't know about.

To me, the contemporary novel suffers from a lack of sense of place - or spirit of place, if you will. It's not important to most writers, I must assume, or they try to research a given background on sabbatical. Not for me. I write about places I've lived long before I ever set pen to paper.

I count myself one of the number of those who write as they learn and learn as they write.

Read everything. If you haven't read everything, you'll never be able to write anything.

I’m not a fan of ‘write what you know.’ If you don’t know, find out. I knew nothing about the Bible before I started writing ‘The Year of Living Biblically.’ That was kind of the point – to learn.

Florida is a great place to set a novel.

All I know for certain is that reading is of the most intense importance to me; if I were not able to read, to revisit old favorites and experiment with names new to me, I would be starved - probably too starved to go on writing myself.

Hemingway said the only way to write about a place is to leave it.

I no have education. I have inspiration. If I was educated, I would be a damn fool.

Taking time to sit back and watch and think about what you've seen is important. Traveling did a great deal to me. I found that when I travel and just sit in the corner and watch, a million ideas come to me.

I'm into books - I love literature, so I toyed with the idea of being an English teacher. I had a fantastic English teacher at school. I think great English teachers make the world go round.

I've never set a book in Europe. I've lived in Europe three times, but somehow or other it wasn't the experience that engaged me in that way.

A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.

They change. They're different. There are no two alike, that's the miracle of it. But if they have something to teach the students. You can see them writing during the show.

I think that I've tried many times to get Cuba in my writings, especially Havana, which was once a great and fascinating city.