Mahmoud Darwish Quotes

I remain convinced that the most valuable use of time for a newly published author is to write a second book that's even better than the first, and a third that's better than the second, and on and on.

Good authors mature over time: it does take awhile.

I believe that every writer evolves with every successive novel. I view myself as work-in-progress.

My second, third and fourth novels were mistakes, essentially.

I've written a lot of books now; I've been published for over 30 years. I hope with every book I learn something new, and with every new novel I try to improve the process of writing.

You are - all your experience just kind of accumulates, and the novel takes a richness of its own simply because it has the weight of all those years that one's put into it.

You are always working on your worst book and your best book at the same time. The praise does not make you write better, and it shouldn't make you write worse, either.

I see my work as a continuum, moving from book to book.

Your first book is kind of a labor of ignorance. You don't realize the difficulty of it. Your second book is sort of a labor of fear. Then you sort of either hit a stride, or you don't.

I think I got serious about writing in the late '90s. The first stuff I wrote was terrible and got rejected, but I started getting more encouraging rejection letters.

I feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others.

I don't think much of anything I wrote before the age of 30.

My first book was signed up when I was 13, and I've been writing ever since. But penning the 'Halo' series has been so much more rewarding than I ever expected. For three years, from the age of 16 to 19, I poured my life, my experiences, and a love for the supernatural that dates back to childhood into these books.

I believe my voice is pretty much the same. I've written 75 books, so I'm better at it now than I was earlier in my career.

Writers don't retire. I will always be a writer.

In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.

The best novel I wrote was one called 'Crusoe's Daughter,' which never won any prizes. But I was getting somewhere in that. I'm not sure I have in any of the others.

I have learned many things in the 30 years that I have been writing.

And now, I'm a best selling author, a different sort of fairy tale that I still sometimes wonder when I'll wake up from.

I wrote three books before I got one published. Most writers do. Have faith, and know that with each work you are getting better.

At risk of sounding foully pompous I think that writers' groups are probably very useful at the beginning of a writing career.

You should constantly write because your writing is always evolving and progressing. It's really important to start writing young.

Although I like the work I've done in the past, I like what I'm writing now even more.

But I've been at writing long enough now to know that every three or four books I have to start a new direction.