Alan Moore Quotes

Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.

The great thing about journalism is that there is so much exposure to all kinds of people who can turn up later as characters, whether you intend it or not.

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.

I get ideas for my books from people I know and what happens to them, from places I've been and what happens to me, and from things I read.

I'm a great believer in the novelist being 'on the scene,' reporting, traveling, meeting all sorts of people.

If you wish to write well, study the life about you,--life in the public streets.

I write characters that are based on elements of people I know and experiences I've really had.

You'd only write what you know and what you know is what you do and the people you know. So you'd write about them or the people you have met casually. It's part of your life.

For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.

I write the books that I'm compelled to and I definitely learn things about the world when I write them, and I hope that other people get something out of them, enjoy them, see the world differently when they're done.

For me, the goal is always to write a novel that I myself would like to read. People frequently ask me what my favorite book is, and in effect, there's always a capital-F Favorite, capital-B Book that I would like to write myself someday. I try to go for that ideal of writing the best, most entertaining, most beautifully written book that I possibly can.

I just think it's sad that the main places in our culture that we designate to meet new people are bars and nightclubs.

When I write a book, I don't have a plan or an outline. The characters move the action, and the action develops the characters. When I write a book, I become an actor, really, taking the role of the person who is speaking or acting at the time, and so their reactions to whatever they see are my reactions.

You can write better about a place you've seen for yourself. You don't have to have been there - I've sure written about places I've never seen - but it does help.

You don't go to other books and take little pieces because although say a romantic scene may have been many times before all the details of who it is, where it is, are so intertwined in that text that it's easier to write it from scratch.

When I first started out, I was trying to write stories about nurses and lawyers and a lot of people I didn't know anything about, and they just weren't working.

[Noah Hawley] just a fantastic writer. It's always about the script, it's always about the book; it always is. If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage. That's what attracted me to him first and foremost.

I don't write the same book over and over - I think if I did that, I would stop writing. I couldn't write a series with the same character, and I couldn't write a romance novel over and over again that takes place at a different beach every year. That's not who I am.

I'm not sure that I have a favorite either on-screen or in the books! Whenever I'm writing, I'm always really excited to dive back into each character.

I try to create new characters in each book I write. That's what makes writing fun and interesting for me.

A lot of people ask, "What do you pull on in your own life from your character?" In all honesty, it's not something that really works that way for me. I tend to look at these things as an imaginative process and a challenge of imagination and empathy, to some degree. I get much more out of meeting people who have lived these lives than I do digging around in my own limited experiences.

To a great extent, I still write for myself, write what amuses me. Fortunately, I have a quirky sort of strange sense of humor that appeals to other people and that's good. I still sort of write for myself though there are some areas of the book I feel I have to put in and I feel I have to deliver.

Writers are magpies, and we collect details about people and we use them for fictional characters.

The cartoon me writes the books cartoon people read in the cartoon world, because they need things to read there too.

To be a writer you should read, write and talk to people, hear their knowledge, hear their problems. Be a good listener. The rest will come.