Find what causes a commotion in your heart. Find a way to write about that
Writing never came naturally and I still have to force my hand to do it.
Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing.
Writing is the only thing I've ever done with persistence, except for being married.
I didn't feel up to writing about 9/11. If I were to write about it, it would take me years.
Some people think that writers are innately solitary and that there's a kind of romance to that solitariness. I tend to think that what writers really want to do is get accepted into things. They want to get accepted into society, into culture, into intelligentsia, into the fun. Writing is their mechanism, their instrument, for doing that.
I went to college to study hospitality. I quickly got out of that and realized that what I liked to do was write.
You can't write ... on the strength of influence. You can only write a good story or a good novel by yourself.
Happiness for me is getting to write about the most important things I know.
And I think that in myself (and perhaps evident in what I write) fear of loss and the corresponding instinct to protect myself against loss are potent forces.
In order to write novels for a living - it's not pathological, but I do think and worry and brood and fidget about stuff that I'm working on.
Someone wanted me to write a profile for ESPN about the commissioner of baseball, and I said, "He's just some suit! Some Republican. No!" I mean if you want me to write about baseball, boxing or football, I'll write about those things because I watch them, I think about them a lot and I like them. But I don't want to write about Barry Bonds.
The way in which sports focuses more on the peccadilloes, lives and putative personalities of athletes and less on the finer points of playing games, I've become less interested in it. I don't want to write sports profiles.
To write you had to read so I backed into reading.
When I write a novel I start each morning by reading for 20 minutes.
