Matt de la Pena Quotes

For me, reading books and writing them are tied together. The words of other writers teach me and refresh me and inspire me.

You don't have to fight dragons to write books. You just have to live deeply the life you've been given.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.

I'm a novelist who read a lot as a kid. When you grow up on books and then grow up to write books, famous authors are a lot more meaningful to you than TV and movie stars.

I've never actually even contemplated writing a book or having a book.

I saw novelists as being admirable people and I thought... I thought... maybe, one day, I could be one of them.

I tell people you should write what you love to read because that's where your passion is.

I really began to love to read while in high school, and my favorite authors were my heroes: J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut.

In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.

I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday.

I'm still surprised to be an author. I wonder what I'll write next?

I wrote 'Marvels,' which was about a guy who had two daughters, and I wrote 'Astro City Volume 2 #1,' which was about a guy who had two daughters. In both cases, about a year and a half or two years apart. And then after that, I had two daughters, about a year and a half or two years apart.

I've been writing for as long as I can remember, and reading even before that. My mom still has stories that I wrote when I was in kindergarten. I was a reader and a re-reader. That's the main reason I became a writer.

Every writer dreams of writing a book that will touch people.

My dream was, and always had been, to write a book. To be a writer.

Good writing will bring you to places you don't even expect sometimes.

I'm not sure there's a difference between books that affected the way I see the world and books that influenced me as a writer.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.

I decided to become an author when my grandmother taught me to write, when I was six. I can still recall the sensation of being able to turn words into stories. It was a miracle.

Naturally, I mine my girlfriends' lives for good anecdotes and stories - so many of their experiences find their way into my books.

I have been writing since I was a kid and thought what I wrote down could one day be made into a book.

When people ask me for secrets to writing, I say, 'Read to write.'

Ben Karlin is a friend of mine and was a writer on 'The Daily Show.' He's just put out a book and asked a bunch of writers from various disciplines to contribute. It was called 'Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me,' and of course I agreed, and then I actually had to sit down and write it. God, writing fiction is terrifying.

Cormac McCarthy is my favorite author in the world. I love him so much. There's one book that informs me more than The Road - it's called Suttree. That book is a huge influence on me. I'm not smart enough to emulate him, but he inspires me. He never infiltrates my writing directly. He writes incredibly intelligently about people that are marginalized.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.