William Golding Quotes

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

Writing is never, ever easy but I wake up every morning grateful for the gift of being able to do this.

Being a writer is not the point. Writing is.

The author may not interpret. But he must tell why and how he wrote his book.

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'm always thinking about stories and ideas, and I have a few I'd like to actively pursue, but as much as I love them, I love the process of creation, and I want to go on and create things for myself, and create new things.

Writing a book is incredibly pleasurable, but very solitary. You have total control, but sometimes that can drive you insane.

A book, while it is being written, has an intense life of its own which you share.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.

Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell or that story to tell, but I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living.

If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.

I don't have a name and I don't have a plot. I have the typewriter and I have white paper and I have me, and that should add up to a novel.

I love the movies, and when I go to see a movie that's been made from one of my books, I know that it isn't going to be exactly like my novel because a lot of other people have interpreted it. But I also know it has an idea that I'll like because that idea occurred to me, and I spent a year, or a year and a half of my life working on it.

Blank paper has always inspired me.

You can't wait for someone to give you a show. That can't be the first time you're writing and drawing a character.

I throw everything I have into whatever story I'm writing - and so there's something immensely gratifying about finishing one piece and then starting fresh with a new setting, time period and cast of characters, getting to see the world through a completely different lens each time.

As artists, we are so not in control most of the time of the content or the narrative of our characters, and sometimes writing takes a turn and it's not something we necessarily have control over. It's just a lot of random dumb luck, so when things click, you've just got to enjoy it.

Writing is like carrying a fetus.

I don't control anything I create.

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'.

I love writing. It's one of my favorite jobs. Of the things I get to do, I love sitting in a room and coming up with ideas, and I love going home and pounding them out.

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.

I've always kind of wrote when I wanted to. Once I get the idea in my head and get it outlined out, I usually just sit and write until it's done.

Once you finish a book, you let it go out into the world to seek its fortune.

I think writing is the most underrated thing in Hollywood.