Patrick Ness Quotes

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

Don't write your books for people who won't like them. Give yourself wholly to the kind of book you want to write, and don't try to please readers who like something different.

Readers would email me and say, 'Please write a novel about so-and-so,' but it has to come from yourself and not so much from your readership.

I prefer writing originals.

I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something. If they write about their own experiences, something true is going to emerge.

You have to write the story that's at the front of your head. There is no point in trying to write for the market; it won't ring true.

If you really want to tell stories, do it and don't be dissuaded.

I feel that if you made your writing too contrived to meet the market, it wouldn't be any good.

I don't write anything if I'm not agreeable and liking it. I'm not one of these slavers who wads up paper. It comes or it doesn't.

I just write the stuff I want to at the time, what feels right for me.

I am sure of this: that no one can write a book which children will like unless he write it for himself first.

I can only say that I myself wrote always as I wished, without a tremendous desire to find the latest thing possible.

We started making content because we wanted to see it, and so our content ended up being genuine.

I just try to do things that make me excited. If I can find a way to surprise myself, then that's when I'm really excited to share something and really can stand behind it.

This goes for our songwriting as well as our success as a band - the minute we stopped chasing what we thought people wanted to hear and started writing things that moved us, that's when people started paying attention.

I just try to write literally what I love. That's usually the barometer that I use. As trite as it sounds, I'm like, 'what would I want to see? What would I be excited about?'

Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!

I like the idea that Ernest Hemingway always wrote about certain things he knew, he knew the ins and outs, back to fronts of what he was talking about. I love that as an inspiration for myself, to keep it true to what you know. I'm always writing little lines and saving them for later.

Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.

Write what you think is good, is the whole of the law.

I try not to observe myself in the process of composing a poem because I don't want to come up with a formula, which I would then be unscrupulous in using.

I try to make my music interesting to me first, then hopefully other people will find it interesting, too.

To create something you must be something.

No one can write like Vallejo and not sound like a fraud. He's just too much himself and not you.

The only thing I really recommend, if you're starting out in stand-up is to not try to copy anybody else. You can be influenced by people. I was influenced by Steve Martin and Bob Newhart and Woody Allen, but I never tried to be someone else. I always tried to be myself. And the reason people are successful is they're unique.