Harry Norman Turtledove Quotes

I don't believe in writing anything that I don't know about or haven't researched about personally. I like to transport the reader to places, and in order to do that I have to do the research.

We generally write best of what we ourselves have seen.

I like to write about wherever I happen to be.

Naturally, I mine my girlfriends' lives for good anecdotes and stories - so many of their experiences find their way into my books.

I think anyone can write about anything that they have knowledge of and exposure to.

You have to write what you know.

I think it's easier for me to write from experience.

Write about what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?

The thing that inspires me most is reading and just observing the people around me. I think those are the two things that make me want to write.

It's easier to write about heartbreak after you've had your heart broken. You have more material to draw from, you can extrapolate from your own experiences and make reasonable assumptions about how your characters would feel and act.

You can't write if you can't relate.

I like the idea that Ernest Hemingway always wrote about certain things he knew, he knew the ins and outs, back to fronts of what he was talking about. I love that as an inspiration for myself, to keep it true to what you know. I'm always writing little lines and saving them for later.

You can't be a writer and have nothing to write about. You have to have life experiences.

They always say, doing what I do for a living, write what you know and then people will respond to it. I luckily had a very charming, lovable mom who I think everybody could see bits and pieces of their mom in. All I had to do was write a character that was like my mom, and it made my life easier.

The best thing to do is to write about what you know, and if you write about what you know you can always pull those nice little tidbits that hook people, that shows that you know about this world and can bring people into a world that they may not know nothing about.

I'm always telling my students go to law school or become a doctor, do something, and then write. First of all you should have something to write about, and you only have something to write about if you do something.

Experience is an author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes.

I discovered a long time ago that writing of the small things of the day, the trivial matters of the heart, the inconsequential but near things of this living, was the only kind of creative work which I could accomplish with any sincerity or grace. As a reporter, I was a flop, because I always came back laden not with facts about the case, but with a mind full of the little difficulties and amusements I had encountered in my travels.

With "Margaret," I remember clearly it was, you know because I did remember it clearly. I was young. I was young in terms of experience and what did I know about and I had an incredible memory from my own childhood. And so it never occurred to me to write for any other age group. And I thought I'm going to write a book and I'm going to tell the truth.

The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know.

Use original detail in your writing. Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.

I'm a young woman and I'm going to write about what I know.

That's my gutsy advice to any young writer: write only about what you know well.

There is no such thing as too ordinary to write about, whether that's life or a scene in a novel. What's interesting to people, whether it's memoir or fiction, is the truth.

Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!