Jay Asher Quotes

The nice thing about being a writer is that you can make magic happen without learning tricks.

I've always liked new writing.

I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction.

Humans are very complex; I definitely have a new respect for authors that are able to write books nonstop. It's an incredible talent.

I was quite a reader before I became a writer.

I'm the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.

An author is somebody who writes a story. It doesn't matter if you're a kid or if you're a grown-up, it doesn't matter if the book gets published and lots of people get to read it, or if you make just one copy and you share that book with one friend.

I had novels to write, so I wrote them.

The first time I can remember thinking that I would like to be a writer came in sixth grade, when our teacher Mrs. Crandall gave us an extended period of time to write a long story. I loved doing it. I started working seriously at becoming a writer when I was seventeen.

I'm still learning my craft, and I've been writing since I was nine.

word thrower … phrase maker

I remember the absolute joy I used to get out of writing. The purity of imagining something and then putting it down on paper - it was such a pleasure. I read whatever I could get my hands on, from 'Great Expectations' to 'The Thorn Birds.'

Just as readers often turn into writers, novel-writers often become novel-reviewers.

I wrote a novel, so now they can call me a novelist. I tell stories; that's it.

In Sydney, I gave what was billed as a masterclass to bright students of writing at the University of Sydney. But the term 'masterclass' was possibly over-egging the pudding. All I could do was pass on some lessons from my own life, and the most obvious is that if you want to be a writer, you must first have been a reader.

I don't really read Stephen King - I just can't read scary things because it stays with me too long - but I truly liked his memoir of the craft of writing.

When you're starting off as a young writer, you look at all the stuff that's gone before and the stuff that's influenced you, and you reach the ladle of your imagination into this bubbling stew pot of all of this stuff, and you pour it out. And that's where you start from.

People say I don't write books, I make Christmas presents.

I used to write stories a lot because you had to fill your hours some other way than watching television. So my imagination was vivid, and I used to write a lot of stories. I wrote a novel, which I still have, which is so awful.

People love talking about writers as storytellers, but I hate being called that: it suggests I got it from my grandmother or something, when my writing really comes out of silence. If a storyteller came up to me, I'd run away.

Big Night and The Impostors are both things that I wrote.

Understand, I had absolutely no interest in writing; I wanted to be a Writer.

If I just sit here, what am I going to do? I don't have a trade. I don't teach or anything. I just love to make up characters and gradually build a story around them.

It's hard to say when my interest in writing began, or how. My mother read to my sister and me every night, and we always loved playing make-believe games. I had a well-primed imagination. I didn't start thinking about writing as a serious pursuit, a career I could have, until after college.

With twenty six letters, you can create anything you like - any person, any world, any place, any emotion. And they are so potent, so powerful, and at the same time, they're marks on the page, and that's all. There's nothing else to them.