J. A. Jance Quotes

A man starts upon a sudden, takes Pen, Ink, and Paper, and without ever having had a thought of it before, resolves within himself he will write a Book; he has no Talent at Writing, but he wants fifty Guineas.

Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.

A budding writer wants to be encouraged.

I'm a novelist who read a lot as a kid. When you grow up on books and then grow up to write books, famous authors are a lot more meaningful to you than TV and movie stars.

Sometimes reading other writers helps. You learn some little technique that turns out to be useful, or simply are reinspired by the amazing things others do.

The writing part of my life never changes, because that's just when the inspiration comes.

I'd go to a bookstore, and I'd flip through flap copy, and I'd think, 'If this gal can get published, I can get published.'

I tell people you should write what you love to read because that's where your passion is.

If my mother hadn't been trying to be a writer, I don't know if I would have thought of it myself.

I've been writing for as long as I can remember, and reading even before that. My mom still has stories that I wrote when I was in kindergarten. I was a reader and a re-reader. That's the main reason I became a writer.

I wrote my first novel and my second novel in Chicago. It was the place where I became a writer. It's my favorite city.

It's that drama that drives authors, you know.

A novel I read when I was about 17 or 18 - 'The World According to Garp,' by John Irving - really made me want to become a writer. The character of Garp is a novelist, and at the time, the whole lifestyle of being a writer was hugely appealing to me.

On a shelf above my computer are five letters that spell out W-R-I-T-E. Just in case I forget why I'm there. I also have 'Wonder Woman' paraphernalia from when I wrote five issues of the comic, and pictures of my husband and kids.

If you love something - and there are things that I love - you do want more and more and more of it, but that's not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was 'Crime and Punishment'. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days... I said, 'If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.'

I decided to become an author when my grandmother taught me to write, when I was six. I can still recall the sensation of being able to turn words into stories. It was a miracle.

I had a high school English teacher who made me really work at writing. And once, when I got an assignment back, she'd written: 'This is so good, Andrew. This should be published!' That made a big impression on me.

The most common thing I find is very brilliant, acute, young people who want to become writers but they are not writing. You know, they really badly want to write a book but they are not writing it. The only advice I can give them is to just write it, get to the end of it. And, you know, if it's not good enough, write another one.

What I tell young writers is to find those things that you're so passionate about that your energy doesn't run away.

When people ask me for secrets to writing, I say, 'Read to write.'

When I read 'Another Country' when I was in my early 20s, you know, as soon as I put the book down, my first thought was, 'I will never be able to write a book like this.' And my second thought was, 'I really want to try writing a book like this for the 21st century.'

When writing 'Give and Take' and 'Originals,' the predominant emotion for me was curiosity.

As authors, we know that it is very difficult to unleash one's creativity.

Sometimes people say to me, “I want to write, but I have five kids, a full-time job, a wife who beats me, a tremendous debt to my parents,” and so on. I say to them, “There is no excuse. If you want to write, write. This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don’t wait. Make the time now, even if it is ten minutes once a week."