David Simon Quotes

I don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story.

All the writing elements are the same. You need to tell a good story... You've got good characters... People think there's some dramatic difference between writing 'Little Bear' and the 'Hunger Games,' and as a writer, for me, there isn't.

Stories of all lengths and depths come from different parts of the cave. For a novel, you must lay in mental, physical and spiritual provision as for a siege or for a time of hectic explosions, while a short story is, or can be, a steady, timed flame like the lighting of a blow lamp on a building site full of dry tinder.

When writing, I'm not thinking about war, even if I'm writing about it. I'm thinking about sentences, rhythm and story. So the focus, when I'm working, even if it's on a story that takes place at war, is not on bombs or bullets. It's on the story.

A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.

I really don't know what I am going to do in terms of what a book is going to be about until I actually start writing it!

My sister and brother are both writers as well. We are constantly discussing story and plot lines. And I love to discuss story ideas with my husband.

When I work on a novel, I usually have one character and a setting in mind.

I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story.

I think the plasticity of the novel is its greatest challenge. There are no rules; there is no necessary form. You can know what you want it to be, or do, and still not know how to write it. There are endless possibilities, infinite choices. What voice should it be in? What events to start with? What characters will be part of it?

Language description and metaphors seem readily available. The things I have to work harder at are plot, pacing, and form.

I think I'm good at metaphors and descriptions. Plot doesn't come naturally to me, so I work really hard at it.

I suppose writing nonfiction did prepare me for writing fiction. Whenever you write anything, you're honing your skills for writing anything else.

I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.

A novel is utterly your own creation, a very private process. I think of a novel as a noun and a screenplay as a verb. In a novel, very little needs to happen; you can explore a person's memories and thoughts and fantasies. In a screenplay, it's all action; you must push the story on.

A short story is something that you can hold in your mind. You can really analyze how the entire thing works, like a machine.

I always think plot is what you fall back on if you can't write, to keep things going.

My job as an author is to tell the story in the best way possible, to make it flow seamlessly and get the reader to keep turning the page.

Whichever character I'm using and wherever I am in my mind dictates what kind of story I'm going to tell.

All fiction relies on the real world in the sense that we all take in the world through our five senses and we accumulate details, consciously or subconsciously. This accumulation of detail can be drawn on when you write fiction.

I'm not very good at story. In fact, compared to character and language, I barely care about story at all.

I write both fiction and nonfiction. I begin my fiction with the main character. The story comes later.

I spent ages figuring out things like viewpoint, how you tell the story, and so on.

I write easily, let's put it that way. And in a novel particularly, the characters take over. And they tell me what to say and they tell me what they're doing. And I'm a third of the way into a novel and then I just let the characters finish it for me.

Playing with different genres and perspectives and ways of telling stories is one of the perks of being a novelist, but at the same time, I want precision. And in order to be precise about stuff, you have to get personal. Symbolism is very boring.