Robert Kurson Quotes

Listen, I wrote 10 unsuccessful books before I broke through, so I'm looking all the time to keep my books fascinating. I want to write what people want to read, not push any message.

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.

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

Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

Writing never comes easy. The difference between Page 2 and Page Nothing is the difference between life and death.

Over time, I decided to take up only those stories I love.

Anything that feels like good characters, I am excited to do whether I write it or not. But if I don't find it in the world, I will write it myself.

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but then you write the version that you can write.

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

I love writing books - I really do. If I could just quit everything and work on a book every day, I would love that most.

Writing a book is a long and difficult process for me. I'm a slow writer, so I spend the year with Elvis Cole and Joe Pike in my head. I was thinking about this the other day. I wrote the first book in 1987. Literally every day since that time, Elvis and Joe have been in my head. They're always there. I started these guys because I like them.

I don't want to talk too much about the nitty-gritty of writing. It's rather like a pressure cooker with a certain amount of pressure in it - the more you let out, the less you cook.

I was always writing the books that I wanted to write, books that demanded to be written at the time. But, like most writers, you start off feeling your way.

I was very fortunate that my first novel captivated the imaginations of so many readers who asked for a sequel. After that, one book led to another as I discovered other facets to my characters I wanted to investigate further.

I used to write stories and poetry, but for some reason I have it in my head that if I'm going to write, I have to write a script.

Anybody who likes writing a book is an idiot. Because it's impossible; it's like having a homework assignment every stinking day until it's done. And by the time you get it in, it's done and you're sitting there reading it, and you realize the 12,000 things you didn't do. I mean, writing isn't fun. It's never been fun.

If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it.

Writing is a lot of fun for me; that's not to say it's easy, but I really do enjoy it.

Even though I don't write about things that come from my life because I'm lucky, and I live in a great place with great kids and, you know, a great husband, I think you can find threads of me in the characters, so that's really what being a writer is, probably.

You're meant to have an unhappy childhood to be a writer, but there's a lot to be said for a very happy one that just lets you get on with it.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

I always felt a little worm inside me: 'Now you need to write a novel with a woman protagonist.'

Finding the discipline, the motivation, the focus, the passion to sit down in front of a blank piece of paper or a blank computer screen every day and then to make it come alive with characters and with plot is incredibly exciting and at the same time terrifying and frustrating, and sometimes it comes easy and sometimes it comes really hard.

I think very visually, and I just never thought I had a novel in me.