Christopher Moore Quotes

I did go through a Goth thing, but that was a long time ago. I just like artists that shake it up, that piss people off or make people think or rattle the cage somehow.

One of the things I have come up against time and again in my career is the notion that because a book is easy to read it was somehow easy to write.

When I get to a point in my book writing when I don't know what I'm going to do next, I'll come back look at underlined passages and see if the images I wrote still have a certain amount of resonance for me.

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

When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book — to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.

By the time you write the last page you have done half the book. The other half tends to get done in about five weeks; I do several drafts, very, very furiously rewriting. I literally do more or less nothing else and I stick with it and go through it and I begin to hate it.

Well, first you have to love writing. A lot of authors love having written. But I enjoy the actual writing. Beside that, I think the main reason I can be so prolific is the huge amount of planning I do before I start to write. I do a very complete, chapter-by-chapter outline of every book I write. When I sit down to write, I already know everything that's going to happen in the book. This means I've done all the important thinking, and I can relax and enjoy the writing. I could never write so many books if I didn't outline them first.

Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.

If you're writing on your own, each character is just you. It's just you.

The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.

The thing that I prefer, when I'm working on a book, is to do a seven-day week, because it's easy to lose some of the details of what you're doing along the way.

The first thing you have to do is get immersed in the project, organizing yourself, knowing what you are going after and not going after. It is extremely important to know what you don't want to find. Research to me is as important or more important than the writing. It is the foundation upon which the book is built.

I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft.

You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic.

The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.

My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.

Writing books isn't a drastic departure from writing for the stage. I've always written in the long format, five, eight, 10-minute pieces rather than one-liners, so since writing books, the process hasn't changed much. A piece in my live routine can end up as part of one of my HBO specials, and it can also end up in one of the books.

The way I write is this: I write about a thousand words a day, a little bit more. The next morning, I read those thousand words and cursorily edit that. Then I write the next thousand. I do that all the way to the end of the book and then I reread the book quite a few times, editing as go through.

I write books that way - I put a first line down and say, "Where does this go?"

There are books that a writer undertakes because she wants to go on a journey, and there are journeys a writer undertakes because she wants to write a book.

Following takes why. Transactions take what. It has to be real. It has to be the same for writing a book.

The process of book writing for me is entirely one of trial and error.

There are stages in bread-making quite similar to the stages of writing. You begin with something shapeless, which sticks to your fingers, a kind of paste. Gradually that paste becomes more and more firm. Then there comes a point when it turns rubbery. Finally, you sense that the yeast has begun to do its work: the dough is alive. Then all you have to do is let it rest. But in the case of a book the work may take ten years.

We'd decided to write a book about two friends. I gave her some coffee and then we sat there not knowing what to do. How do you start writing a book together? So Kate [DiCamillo] got up after about 10 minutes into this endeavor, and said, 'Well, that was fun,' and started to head out the door. I said, 'Wait, wait, wait, no no no,' because I'm a bit more patient.

A book, at the same time, also has to do with what I call a buzz in the head. It's a certain kind of music that I start hearing. It's the music of the language, but it's also the music of the story. I have to live with that music for a while before I can put any words on the page. I think that's because I have to get my body as much as my mind accustomed to the music of writing that particular book. It really is a mysterious feeling.