Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.
I usually write about ordinary people and ordinary things, but Paul Farmer is the least ordinary person I've ever met... He's the leader of a small group of people who hope to cure a sick world, and I hope my book can help in some small way.
I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.
You can write about anything, and if you write well enough, even the reader with no intrinsic interest in the subject will become involved.
I tell beginning readers to read a lot and write a lot. If you want to write a book, find a subject that's really worth the time and effort you'll put in.
I think if the writing comes too easily, it shows - it's usually hard to read.
I always want to write something better than the last book.
People say you cant teach writing, but I think thats nonsense.
I am grateful to Stacy Schiff first of all because she can write a sentence-because she offers us her scholarship with wit, clarity, and grace. Once again, she has done what only the best writers can do: she has made the world new, again.
At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.
The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia
