I think it's an area that one writes from that is curious because it is not a clearly defined partisan one.
I don't feel like I'm a writer who works under any influence.
When a reporter sits down at the typewriter, he's nobody's friend.
Most of the things I write, I write on spec. And because I write them on spec, there's less interference. Because there's less interference, they tend to be better.
I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers.
My advice for telling someone else's story is to try not to consciously bend the story in any particular direction - to listen with an open mind, to include the good with the bad, to attempt to quell one's biases and allow the person you're writing about to emerge as wholly as possible, warts and all.
But it is a writer's duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended.
I don't like to read novels where the novelist tells me what to think about the situation and the characters. I prefer to discover for myself.
I feel like my job is to look at the world and to report what I see, to write what I see as honestly and directly as I can. I don't want to cut it or make it easy, but be as direct as I can.
The records are black boxes for me. Like, if you want to know who I am, my views, my perspective, things I love, things I hate, my convictions, my anthems. I've never let people's opinions affect the way I write.
I try and write the way things happen. I don't try and fulfill people's wishes.
Ever since I began to compose, I have remained true to my starting principle: not to write a page because no matter what public, or what pretty girl wanted it to be thus or thus; but to write solely as I myself thought best, and as it gave me pleasure.
The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
Who does not know history's first law to be that an author must not dare to tell anything but the truth? And its second that he must make bold to tell the whole truth? That there must be no suggestion of partiality anywhere in his writings? Nor of malice?
I don't write for an audience, I don't think whether my book will sell, I don't sell it before I finish writing it.
I didn't want it to be a book that made pronouncements.
In writing the history of a disease, every philosophical hypothesis whatsoever, that has previously occupied the mind of the author, should lie in abeyance.
I write what I like. I don't bother what people think about it.
You can try to reach an audience, but you just write what comes out of you and you just hope that it is accepted. You do not write specifically to a generation.
And that's what the audience was feeling too, as they watched the show and as they watch it now. And overriding all of that is the way it was written. It was written honestly. There was never any manufactured laugh. There was never compromising of character.
I shall stick to my resolution of writing always what I think no matter whom it offends.
I don't tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.
I believe that, in an ideal world, writers would feel free to write what matters to them without having to consider success, failure, the market, etc.
You find yourself writing the truth, because it's like, 'Well, I ain't writing for anyone but myself anyway.'
All my books are accidental books - they come from reacting to things and thinking about things and engaging in a real way. They are not about, 'Oh, did it get a good review in the Guardian?' I don't care.
