Jack Vance Quotes

Usually I decide on what it is I'm writing next by the books I'm reading.

Everything can be grist for the muse. Sometimes, writers draw on personal experiences. 'Ghoul' was just that.

I discovered that writing was very nice indeed when I was very young, and I never changed. I don't think my style has changed very much at all - though I hope what I say is a bit more interesting. It's about getting to know a character and loving them, I think.

Writing a novel - unlike operating a piece of heavy machinery, say, or cooking a chicken - is not a skill that can be taught. There is no standard way of doing it, just as there is no means of telling, while you're doing it, whether you're doing it well or badly. And merely because you've done it well once doesn't mean you can do it well again.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

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.

If you're mostly a writer - if your point of departure is writing something - which for a writer/director is sort of where you start, you're really influenced by the writers you love one way or another.

Hopefully, reading and being around great literature inspires me to write songs, but I'm not sure about that.

Most everything that happens to me in any significant sense finds its way into my fiction.

You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.

I don't have traceable literary models because I haven't had great literary influences in my life.

I started writing when I was about 20, 21 maybe.

I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.

Somebody said writing is easy, you just sit down at your typewriter and open a vein. It depends on the book. Some, I have to do quite a lot of research, which I like. Others are much closer to me.

Doing interesting things and then writing about them is the best way to become a good writer.

If I have any advantage, maybe, as a writer, it is that I don't think I'm very interesting. I mean, beginning a novel with the last sentence is a pretty plodding way to spend your life.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

Now I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am.

I enjoy talking to groups who are interested in the writing process or the industry. I never teach - because truthfully, I don't know how it all works; it just does. Sort of magic-like. But I love to share my experiences and perspectives.

I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway.

Oh, I think every author is inspired by all of the books that she reads.

I have heard of novels started in the middle, at the end, written in patches to be joined together later, but I have never felt the slightest desire to do this.

When you're a writer, everything that interests you feeds into your work.

Other writers definitely influence my writing. What encourages me and inspires me is when I read a good book. It makes me want to be a better writer.

Like many authors, I caught the writing bug during my teenage years. I don't remember the exact day or year, but I remember that reading S.E. Hinton's 'The Outsiders' sparked my interest in writing.