Karl Iagnemma Quotes

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

When I write, the first blank page, or any blank page, means nothing to me. What means something is a page that has been filled with words.

A lot of writers that I know have told me that the first book you write, you write about your childhood, whether you want to or not. It calls you back.

For the years I spent working on it, 'Constellation' was the only novel I knew how to write, so maybe I still abided by the maxim? Regardless, I prefer the maxim: Write what you want to know, rather than what you already know.

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.

Writing was my route to creative expression, and I needed to write about the things that interested me.

I started off like everyone else does, slogging but having a compulsion to put words on paper. I didn't write or read horror or fantasy, other than children's fantasy, until I was in my teens.

My own journey in becoming a poet began with memory - with the need to record and hold on to what was being lost. One of my earliest poems, 'Give and Take,' was about my Aunt Sugar, how I was losing her to her memory loss.

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.

I know you're supposed to hide your influences, but I suppose I see writing as riffing, really, about whatever you have been reading or thinking about that day or that week.

I used to think that when I finished a book, I was finished with it. But it's like a wonderful Hydra. Every time a head disappears, more heads appear, so I will be writing for the rest of my life. The more books I write, the more books I find that I still have to write about. I use it like an inspiration, and that's wonderful.

It's real easy for me to write a lot of stories. I just go and I live through something, and I go home and write about it. It's that quick.

I feel like part of getting better at writing is knowing where to find that inspiration. Right after something happens to me, the first thing I'll do is go write when those feelings are really, really fresh.

When I'm writing a novel, I'm usually just trying to write about things that are interesting to me.

Richard Hugo taught me that anyone with a desire to write, an ear for language and a bit of imagination could become a writer. He also, in a way, gave me permission to write about northern Montana.

Novelists can ask - they can ask for anything - but their books are their answers in advance.

People may get tired of hearing from me, but I don't think I'll ever run out of things that I want to write about.

Of everything with 'The Room' that came out of it, I feel like being able to write, and tap back into that passion, was something I'm really thankful for.

Probably when I was about 16 or 17 I started writing. I wouldn't call it poetry, even though I've referred to it as poetry a couple times. But I don't think that's right. It was more scribblings and stream of consciousness.

I've always found the Write-What-You-Know axiom small and stifling.

If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.

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

I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

I throw everything I have into whatever story I'm writing - and so there's something immensely gratifying about finishing one piece and then starting fresh with a new setting, time period and cast of characters, getting to see the world through a completely different lens each time.

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.