Literary Focus Quotes

When I wrote about the French Revolution, I didn't choose to write about aristocrats; I chose characters who began their lives in provincial obscurity.

I just think of myself as a writer. Yes, I'm a woman. And I'm a writer. The main challenge is that I like to write stories about young women, and society doesn't place much of a premium on young women's stories. And I think that's why I gravitate towards it. I really honor that, and I treasure that time, and they should be given that respect.

I think too much is known about me already. I think biographical information can get in the way of the reading experience. The interchange between the reader and the work. For example, I know far too much about Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut. Because I know as much as I do about their personal lives, I can't read their work without this interjecting itself. So if I had it to do over, I'd probably go the way of J.D. Salinger or Thomas Pynchon. And just stay out of it altogether and let all the focus be on the work itself and not on me.

Because, if one is writing novels today, concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons, for wasted effort.

While writing a novel I almost completely stop reading books in the same sub-genre for the duration.

The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance.

Readers want more of the same from you. So stick to one genre.

The arm which should have launched the thunderbolt was occupied in guiding the pen.

I would write of the universal, not the provincial, in human nature.... I would write of characters, not of characteristics.

They, all of them, seemed to put literary form in front of the actuality and living of life itself.

I love stories, and my life is principally concentrated on stories, but not with a pretense of scientific precision.

I don't write for an auditorium full of people. I don't write for the microphone; I write for the page.

Advice to young writers wo want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man, write about a man.

The point about 'state-of-the-nation' novels is not that they should be about the 'state-of-the-nation', but they should be about people.

The preoccupation of American historical and literary scholars with the New England Puritans must seem to outsiders like an obsession.

I would love to focus on writing books that were not just about issues.

People should be interested in books, not their authors.

For as spiritual as some people think my books are, I've never really dealt with religious things.

One of the things that novels have tended not to concentrate on over the centuries is the fact that people read books.

The writer studies literature, not the world.

I don't think I consciously decided to write for the young adult audience; my subconscious decided for me.

The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write.

Once you reach your fifties, you have to stop being interested in the present and write only on Elizabethan poets.

My novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else's books.

My twenties were entirely taken up with literature. Entirely.