Anthony Doerr Quotes

When you're a writer and you're an adult, that's something you crave - that limitless imagination and love for worlds that don't exist that you can create.

The nice thing about being a writer is that you can make magic happen without learning tricks.

I write poetry anyway and have for years and years. For me, putting fiction and poetry together is like the best of both worlds.

I like that original romance of having a pen and a legal pad and going anywhere in the world and being able to write a novel with just those two things.

The opportunity to be a storyteller is the greatest thing in the world, and I feel so lucky and really love it.

I really enjoy writing novels. It's like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off.

I'm totally in control of this tiny, tiny world right there at the typewriter.

I never thought about writing a novel until I was 13, and that happened by chance. I was on school holidays, and I was bored, and I thought I just wanted to do something to occupy myself instead of asking, 'What can I do, mum? Entertain me.' I started, and it really just took over, and I realised, 'Wow, this is an amazing experience.'

I used to write stories a lot because you had to fill your hours some other way than watching television. So my imagination was vivid, and I used to write a lot of stories. I wrote a novel, which I still have, which is so awful.

I remember the absolute joy I used to get out of writing. The purity of imagining something and then putting it down on paper - it was such a pleasure. I read whatever I could get my hands on, from 'Great Expectations' to 'The Thorn Birds.'

Never forget that the truest luxury is imagination, and that being a writer gives you the leeway to exploit all of the imagination's curious intricacies, to be what you were, what you are, what you will be, and what everyone else is or was or will be, too.

I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We're still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends.

Blank paper has always inspired me.

I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.

There is a plethora of topics to explore. I sometimes think I may never live long enough to explore all of the unique story lines I have either in my head or waiting in my computer file.

I think I became a writer because of my love of stories and an inability to stop asking, 'What if?'

Writing is hard work, but a lot of fun, too. It allows me to live out some of my fantasies.

I am a writer - that is what I am before being a performer or musician. I love waking up in the morning and then going to sleep that night with something that did not exist.

The only way to be a novelist, to think that you can create something others will give themselves up to for a dozen hours or more, is to have psychotic self-belief.

I might be into writing... I'd like to try it someday. I always come up with some good ideas.

I've always loved writing, and the impulse for me is storytelling. I don't sit down and think: 'What political message can I sell?' I love the creativity of it.

I may attempt a novel. I think that no matter what you write, it requires being honest with oneself, and you have to pull yourself out of the whirlwind of daily life.

There's a mystery to writing, and you don't really know where most of it comes from.

I love to write. It's my first love.