Glen Duncan Quotes

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

I can't do a film if I don't start with the writing.

To be a writer, you need to like spending a lot of time by yourself in the company of imaginary people.

I started writing when I was about 20, 21 maybe.

I always have a book that I use that somehow inspires my novels.

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

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!

In 25 years of writing novels, I've never had anything that felt like writer's block.

The question I am most often asked is how do I find my ideas? The answer is I don't. Ideas find me. A character in history will suddenly step right out of the past and demand a book. Generally, people don't bother to speak to me unless there's a good chance that I'll take them on.

Struggling writers are often advised to pick a simple genre, but it doesn't work that way.

I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.

The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major.

I now can be sure that, once I start writing a book, I'll be able to finish it. I've also become more assured about my 'voice' as a writer and being able to keep the characters true to themselves.

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.

Novel writing is solitary work.

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

I never know how to give advice to a writer because there's so much you could say, and it's hard to translate your own experience. But of course, I always try. The main thing that I usually end up saying is to read a lot. To read a great deal and to learn from that.

I've always said the hardest aspect of the job of being a writer is writing.

I am very fortunate in that I have spent pretty much my whole life being a writer, and before I was a writer, I was a storyteller.

I like writing my own material - I'm pretty good at it.

When I'm writing, I don't read much crime at all - you don't want to get distracted by other people's plots.

I know that when I'm writing, I always want to be directing.

Sustaining a narrative in sentences and paragraphs is very different from songwriting. But the dedication to the craft and just the endurance that it takes, you know, to stick with it and believe you can pull it out and make it real and finish it, I learned that a long time ago writing songs.

If you want to take writing on, you should pay writing the respect it deserves, which is to say, reading it.

My method is, I just sit down and write a book.