Margaret Mahy Quotes

When I finish my first draft I usually narrate it to some trusted friends who can give me feedback. All criticism is welcome.

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.

Write. Write every day. Write honestly. Write something that doesn’t exist, and you wish did. Read. Learn. Study. Watch people. Listen to what they say, listen to how they say it and listen to what they do not say. Surprise yourself. Scare yourself.

People do write books.

My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out.

I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction.

I could come up with 50 stories that I am thinking about.

At the moment, I'm toying with a new idea for a book, but fully engaged with writing screenplays, so the book idea - which needs empty space in my head - is barely formed yet.

You have to take your ego out of it and say, do I want people to be obsequious to me or do I want to write good books? If it's the latter, you have to take criticism. It's annoying, but that's how to do good stuff; listen to other people.

If you want to write for T.V. and movies, you will be subjected to kind and unkind criticism. You had better get used to it and develop a shell.

I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images.

I have written my own screen version of Pern, but had no buyers yet.

I love to write and to get to know the people who are listening.

I kept sending out stories and getting rejected.

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.

For me, movies and television are interesting because they are the dominant storytelling form of our time. My first love will always be fiction, and especially novels, but I'm a writer... I write poetry and essays and criticism and I'd love to write a whole play, and sometimes I even write scripts.

I think I'm a born storyteller. Inspiration is all around me. I can read a newspaper article and come up with an idea for a book.

My books always begin with a sentence and an image - not necessarily connected.

Writing means sharing. It's part of the human condition to want to share things - thoughts, ideas, opinions.

I always have a notebook with me, I eavesdrop; I write down what people say. It's very rare that one of those things will provoke a story, but I think that that kind of paying attention all the time, and keeping everything open, lets the stories come in. But where they come from is still a mystery to me.

I write and I read, and I write and read my way into and out of ideas and life. And that's what we do. That's what storytellers do.

Something people say about acting is that acting is listening. But I think that writing is listening, too. That you really have to listen to what are they saying and what they're communicating to you. And so, a lot of it is just getting stuff down.

And, of course, there were some times when I had writer's block and I had a hard time figuring out how to express what I wanted to express.

I'll take criticism. I know that's part and parcel of football. But when it's just reckless and aggressive, I don't listen.

It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. This may work well enough if you are observing cells under a microscope. It will not work if you are writing fiction. For the fiction writer, to believe nothing is to see nothing.