Cynthia Kadohata Quotes

I think I've written 40 books, and none of them have been heavy on action. I'm an introspective person.

The first audience that you have when writing a book is you.

I think a conceptual idea comes to me first - something I've been mulling over a lot right before I feel like writing a book - and then the characters start to develop around it.

I write books for all age groups - young kids, teenagers and adults - because I get a range of different ideas.

When I'm writing a book, sentence by sentence, I'm not thinking theoretically. I'm just trying to work out the story from inside the characters I've got.

When I write a book, characters come to life for me somewhere at the back of my head. I strive to make them flesh and blood in an abstract way, in words.

I write books I'd enjoy reading, I'm the reader standing behind my shoulder.

[On her and husband Michael Dorris:] We both have title collections. I think a title is like a magnet. It begins to draw these scraps of experience or conversation or memory to it. Eventually, it collects a book.

In the most self-protective of ways, I don't think about the reader when I'm writing - I just think about the story.

What excites me, what attracts me, what gets me up in the morning is telling the next story and getting it out in front of readers and hoping they'll love it too.

I absolutely wasn't going to write a book if it was just going to be about punk.

I make extensive outlines before I write a book. I usually know what will happen. I know the characters, and I know what they are about.

If you think about writing a book, or when I did, it seems daunting, but when I began writing, it just started flowing.

The first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents; the book you always had in you. Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books.

When I write, I never think of segments as chapters; I think of them as scenes. I always visualize them in my mind. Then I try to get the scene down on paper as closely as I can. That's the one thing that readers don't see - what you have in your mind. The reader can only see what you get on the page.

A really good day for me is to write my book for about four hours, go to the writing room for about four hours and then maybe come back to the book to finish the day for a few more hours of it.

I don't necessarily read everything. I read what I need to read to inspire the book I'm trying to finish.

When I type a title page, I hold it and I look at it and I think, I just need four thousand sentences to go with this and I’ll have a book.

The only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer until something happens.

When I start to write, I see my stories as a kind of movie. For instance, I ask myself, "What kind of opening do I want for this book?"

I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That's so many pages longhand.

Writing a book I have found to be like building a house. A man forms a plan, and collects materials. He thinks he has enough to raise a large and stately edifice; but after he has arranged, compacted and polished, his work turns out to be a very small performance. The authour however like the builder, knows how much labour his work has cost him; and therefore estimates it at a higher rate than other people think it deserves

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.

I finish the book so I can see how it's going to end. I write that first sentence, and if it's the right first sentence, it leads to the right second sentence and three years later you have a 500-page manuscript, but it really is like going on a trip, going on a journey. It's a voyage.

Having written Camp David as a drama, I could see the drama maybe a little more clearly when I wrote the book.