Paula Hawkins Quotes

I found some time ago that I have to be careful, while working on a novel, what I read.

If I didn't see its place in the Saga when I planned it, I probably wouldn't write it at all.

No, it's not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

I'm often asked how I write books, but I don't think my approach is suitable for everyone. If I walked into a creative writing class, all I could say to them was 'I tend to make it up as I go along.' I'm not sure that's brilliant advice.

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!

People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research.

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

As far as personal philosophies go, I think you should know your ending. I know that's radically different from a lot of other writers who just organically like to find the story. Other than that, I try different things and mess around. I'm still just playing a good bit.

I don't stare at a sheet of paper and try to think of a good word to use. I try to see where the story should go.

Every book is like starting over again. I've written books every way possible - from using tight outlines to writing from the seat of my pants. Both ways work.

I write short stories. I write every day.

I'm not one of these 'the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me' kind of writers. Wish it was like that.

While writing a novel, I don't read anything new in fiction. I am too engrossed.

Writing 'when you find me,' it really exposed me to a way of putting together a story I hadn't thought of.

Writing - not being a writer with interesting habits - gets priority.

I'm very interested in writing - it just takes so much discipline, whether it's short stories or novels.

I've always been an entertainer all my life; I come from a family of entertainers. I always made, very pretentiously, a comparison with Agatha Christie. Her inspiration was crime, and I'm sure she must have taken courses or read about crime, because it was the basis of her stories. But ultimately, it was her own fantasy.

Well, to be honest I think I'm a better short story writer than a novelist. Novels I find very hard, hours and hours, weeks and weeks, of conscious thought - whereas short stories slip out painlessly in a few days.

For me as a writer, the story has always taken precedence over everything else. I have never sat down to write with broad, sweeping ideas in mind, and certainly never with a specific agenda.

I've never been comfortable with the idea of using family and friends in stories. Which is why it takes me longer than something else. Because you make them up out of nothing. Doing that is harder.

I don't really do themes. I might accidentally, but themes are an emergent phenomena of the writing of the book, of just trying to get a story out there.

Usually I decide on what it is I'm writing next by the books I'm reading.

I have heard of novels started in the middle, at the end, written in patches to be joined together later, but I have never felt the slightest desire to do this.

In order to write novels for a living - it's not pathological, but I do think and worry and brood and fidget about stuff that I'm working on.

If you're writing a novel, you're in a room for three or four years. There's not much coming in from the outside.