Patti Smith Quotes

It may sound very strange, but I love the freedom that writing a novel gives me. It is an unhindered experience. If I come after a bad day, I can decide that my protagonist will die on page 100 of my novel in a 350-page story.

I like that original romance of having a pen and a legal pad and going anywhere in the world and being able to write a novel with just those two things.

Writing is total grunt work. A lot of people think it's all about sitting and waiting for the muse. I don't buy that. It's a job. There are days when I really want to write, days when I don't. Every day I sit down and write.

I learned long ago, back with 'Lover Revealed,' that my job is to sit at the computer, shut up and type. Otherwise? The pictures and the voices go away!

I really enjoy the writing process because I can do it from my house. I can create these characters and take them in the different directions that I want to take them. You have a lot of freedom as a writer.

When young writers approach me for advice, I remind them, as gently as I can, that they are on their own, with no help available anywhere. Which is how it should be.

Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.

My favorite thing is being able to follow my inspiration, and the freedom of being a writer is hard to beat.

Being a writer is a very private, internal process. Ultimately I am more the writer, being an introvert.

When I lock myself up to write, I cannot allow myself to think about the censor or the reviewer or anyone but my characters and their story!

Fall into your sentences; enjoy writing them. Love the world you are creating.

Every day I write. I am not waiting for a great idea from heaven.

Being a writer is great because you get to come up with stuff.

I write every day. I'm always in the process of writing my last book, until the next one.

You can't wait for someone to give you a show. That can't be the first time you're writing and drawing a character.

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.

The great thing about being a novelist is that you organize your own day.

When I decide to write a story, I don't think too much about what I want it to be, I just let things come naturally and this is how it turns out. It's just how my subconscious works.

I've always prided myself on my discipline as a writer. I do it like a job. I get up in the morning and go to my desk.

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.

We have to learn not to feel guilty about letting our imagination browse around, and you know, in writing fiction particularly. But I think, in any kind of writing, we have to learn to allow ourselves to approach it in a contemplative way.

The first draft is all about freedom, and if loyalty is in question, it is only my loyalty to the characters and situations on the page. All the worries about where the material may have sprung from or what so-and-so might think can be dealt with later.

I devote most of my day to writing, and try to turn out at least four pages a day. As for what triggers the creative process, it's a mystery to me! Characters often just walk on the page, and I wait to see what they do and say while I'm writing them.

'For Whom the Bell Tolls' was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

Writing is solitary. You spend so much time alone and in your own mind, telling stories.