Graham Greene Quotes

I'm still getting to the good part / the breaking down / learning how to write my story.

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

There's that lovely thing for the first month or two of writing a new book: OK, I don't know what that character's going to do, but we'll find out later. After about three or four months you come to that bit where you've got to put some plot in before it's too late, and you have to go back and start inserting plot, and, ooh, I've left out the literature, OK, lets put some in.

I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing.

The only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer until something happens.

You need more than a beginning if you're going to start a book. If all you have is a beginning, then once you've written that beginning, you have nowhere to go.

Every paragraph should accomplish two goals: advance the story, and develop your characters as complex human beings.

Parker wasn't supposed to be a series. He was supposed to be one book, and if he was only going to be in one book, I didn't worry about it. And then an editor at Pocket Books said "Write more books about him." So I didn't go back at that point and give him a first name. If I'd known he would've been a series, I would've done two things differently. First, I would've given him a first name because that means for 27 books, I've had to find some other way to say, "Parker parked the car."

The way I write is really like putting one foot in front of the other. I really let the characters do most of the work, they start talking and they just lead the way.

I don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background.

I was going to write a book one day and I actually did. To have it is a major accomplishment for me.

I think that most writers who are trying to write important and difficult books are in many ways putting their own humanity into question. Sometimes the journey is finding out where you stand in relationship to your own humanity and to the humanity of others.

When I first started, I didn't really know how to structure a play. I could write dialogue, but I just sort of failed beyond that, and kind of went wherever I wanted to go.

I don't talk about my books while I'm writing them: not even my husband knows what a novel's about until it's done.

I finish the book so I can see how it's going to end. I write that first sentence, and if it's the right first sentence, it leads to the right second sentence and three years later you have a 500-page manuscript, but it really is like going on a trip, going on a journey. It's a voyage.

Yeah, and the language the "we" has, and the character the "we" has. Because that was the part of the book that I didn't plan out, but the part that I was most curious about as I was writing. You know what you're doing, but you're sometimes still sort of curious as you're writing it.

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.

With the story of your life, you dont get to write the whole book, just your character.

I'm not sure that I have a favorite either on-screen or in the books! Whenever I'm writing, I'm always really excited to dive back into each character.

Over the years, you grow up, you mature and you see things in a different way, and it's reflected in the writing.

I have never written a book that didn't teach me far more than it taught my reader.

I try to create new characters in each book I write. That's what makes writing fun and interesting for me.

I did a lot of this through writing flashbacks. Many of the flashbacks took place at Cal's school and I eventually cut them because they didn't seem essential and they slowed the pace of the story in the first third of the book. They were essential to me, though, in that I learned about my characters.

I never thought I could write this much and now that it's coming to an end, I feel sad that I have to stop, sort of the way you feel at the end of a really good book and you know you're going to miss the main character. But in this case, the main character is me! Myself. Joe (formerly JoDan) Bunch. —Joe Bunch