Richard Ford Quotes

The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.

Being a writer involves writing. You've got to commit to sitting down and writing instead of Xbox or Netflix.

The only difference between a writer and someone who wants to be a writer is discipline.

Novel writing is the slowest art form in the world. It is not a sprint. It is not even a marathon. It is a series of marathons that stretch over and over across a continent.

The writing comes first for me. Not Facebook, not Twitter, not the Internet or signings or merchandise, or 'the career.' Everything begins and ends with the writing for me, and I build my entire life around sitting my butt down 365 days a year.

My parents have a wonderful marriage, for many years. But I can't commit myself for such a long time.

You have to write every day, and you have to write whether you feel like it or not.

There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.

You won't make a living writing until you learn to write when you don't want to.

It just proves that I've been here for a long time and, I guess, have done the right things over the years.

The writing part of my life never changes, because that's just when the inspiration comes.

For some of us, watching a miniseries that lasts longer than most marriages is not easy.

I think it takes a lot of desire because I think a lot of people who've never written books don't know quite how hard it is to stick with, to put in the amount of time and just make the commitment to just sit there every day and do it while everybody else is out having fun.

I am always trying to write.

A one-hundred-thousand-word novel might take a year or several years, and then you just come to 'The End' one day. But it takes hundreds of days to get to 'The End.' As a writer, you have to put in those hundreds of days.

People always ask me how long somebody can last as long as I've been lasting and continue to keep doing it, so I figured that people didn't really know how to do that.

Novelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour.

I write all the time, whether I feel like it or not. I never get inspired unless I'm already writing.

The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.

The most important lesson my parents taught me is that writing is a job, one that requires discipline and commitment. Most of the time it's a fun job, a wonderful job, but sometimes it isn't, and those are the days that test you.

I'd like to meet fewer people who say 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 10 pages I've written,' and more 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 300 pages I've written.'

The only way to learn writing is by writing. Talent, as charming as it sounds, amounts to no more than 12 per cent of the process. Work is 80 per cent. The remaining 8 per cent is 'luck' or 'zeitgeist' - in short, things that are not in our hands.

For me, the optimum circumstances for writing a book are those of stultifying routine.