Don't be a writer. Writing is an escape from something. You be a scientist.
One of the reasons that I think I do love to write is because I did have a difficult childhood and not so great teenage years. It always helped me escape from my problems.
This experience of getting so lost in my writing that I lose track of time, or of anything outside the imagined world, is a release for me.
I write to escape from my life. Writing about men separates 'me' from my work in a way that I find comforting.
There comes a point when you're writing a novel when you're in it so deep that the life of the novel becomes more real to you than life itself. You have to write your way out of it; once you're there, it's too late to abandon.
Writing is my vacation from living.
When I'm writing, I like to seal everything off and face the wall, not to look outside the window. The only way out is through the sentences.
I have to say, 'Pod' was a bon-bon, a treat to myself. A treat to write: a happy, pleasurable write.
For me, writing is such an escape, and I felt very lucky to have this to run away to.
When I am writing best, I really am lost in my world. I lose track of the outside world. I have a difficult time balancing between my real world and the artificial world.
I so desperately hate to end these movies that the first thing I do when I'm done is write another one. Then I don't feel sad about having to leave and everybody going away.
I love sitting at my desk and facing a quiet day with a pen in my hand, and putting myself into a story. It's kind of weird, isn't it? I mean, to absent myself from real life and make up stories is strange, but I started doing this when I was ten years old. It was all I wanted to do.
When you're writing, it's so absorbing. It's like a drop cloth goes over you, and the world outside falls away, but you do have a miniature version of the world, your own world, that you actually have some control over. I love to work.
When I first started writing, I didn't write about scientists at all. I think I wanted a break from that part of my world.
If ever I was feeling down I would go and write something. It's a form of escape.
I don't really read as much as I used to. A lot of what I was looking for as an escape I find in writing. And the other thing is that I don't want to get into someone else's language when I'm working.
There are certainly times when my own everyday life seems to retreat so the life of the story can take me over. That is why a writer often needs space and time, so that he or she can abandon ordinary life and 'live' with the characters.
When you're writing, it's as if you're within a kind of closed world.
Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder - and turn quickly to my typewriter.
I love writing on trains. The joy of being a writer is it's all in your head; you don't need materials apart from the laptop. It's like taking your work home with you, so you can feel grounded in your own insane writerly realities wherever you are.
