Len Deighton Quotes

I was very fortunate that my first novel captivated the imaginations of so many readers who asked for a sequel. After that, one book led to another as I discovered other facets to my characters I wanted to investigate further.

When I'm working on one book, part of my imagination is thinking ahead to the next one.

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

Most everything that happens to me in any significant sense finds its way into my fiction.

It's so much work to make a movie, and for me it has to get me off my butt. To get me actually writing you have to strike something inside, you have to hit a power main to get the energy. You have to strike something you care about.

The best books arise from some ultimate question in the author.

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

I am never not thinking about stories. 'The Bone Season' is 90% of my brain - 10% is interacting with the rest of the world.

I write about people I think are interesting, and then I discuss it with my editor, and she decides if she thinks it will be interesting to children as well. If I have no great interest in the subject, I find the work to be terribly boring. And if I find the person interesting, I love the research part and, by extension, the writing as well.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't trying to get something down on paper.

I devote most of my day to writing, and try to turn out at least four pages a day. As for what triggers the creative process, it's a mystery to me! Characters often just walk on the page, and I wait to see what they do and say while I'm writing them.

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!

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.

Once I finished 'Eileen,' I wanted to write more novels. I don't see myself stopping any time soon.

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.

You never know how - or when - the idea for a book will appear.

It wasn't until I was working on 'Tacky' that I admitted to myself that I was writing a series.

In order for a long piece of work to engage a novelist over an extended period of time, it has to deal with questions that you find very important, that you're trying to work out.

The process of writing a novel begins with a pang, a moment of recognition, and a situation, a character, or something you read in a paper, that seems to go off, like a solar flare inside your head.

If you write, one of the questions you're always trying to answer is, Where do you get your ideas? And, if you write, you know how pointless a question this is and how difficult it is to answer.

From the beginning, when I first got an idea for a story and wondered if I could write it, it has always been the story that has driven me.

I've always found the second book in a series is the hardest to write.

It's that drama that drives authors, you know.

Usually a feeling of disappointment follows the book, because what I hoped to write is not what I actually accomplished. However, it becomes a motivation to write the next book.

Books, I don't know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them.