“I grew up in a community where it was not the exception to be a good girl. It was sort of expected. And all of my friends were good girls too, and my boyfriends were good boys. Everybody was pretty nice. And that affects how I write my characters. There aren't very many bad guys in my novels.” WritingCharacterGuyGirlCommunityBoysNovelNiceGrewGrew UpMy FriendsExpectedExceptionBad GuysMy BoyfriendGood GirlGood Boy Author:Stephenie Meyer
“Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going to happen. You have a broad sense, maybe, but it's this rash leap. It's like spelunking. You kind of create the right path for yourself. But, boy, are there so many points at which you think, absolutely, I'm going down the wrong hole here. And I can't get back to the right hole. I'm not going to be able to get this section back to the right hole - so I'm just going to have to cut it.” ThinkingWritingKindLittlesI CanIdeasHappensAbleBoysNovelPathCuttingWillingHolesLeapGet BackBroadsSectionsBlacknessRight Path Author:Chang-Rae Lee
“I kept starting 'Anansi Boys' as a movie and stopping, and eventually wrote the novel and was happy.” BoysNovelStartingStopping Author:Neil Gaiman
“Yes, writing a novel, my boy, is like driving pigs to market - you have one of them making a bolt down the wrong lane; another won't get over the right stile.” WritingBoysNovelDrivingPigsGet OverLanesBoltsMy BoysStiles Book:Collected Impressions Source: Collected Impressions
“Many people have compared me to the Victorian adventure writer, Rider Haggard. I accept that as a compliment. As a boy growing up in Central Africa I read all Haggard's African novels.” PeopleAcceptingBoysNovelGrowing UpGrowingAdventureComplimentRidersVictorianHaggard Author:Walter Smith
“There's a difference between doing memoir and writing a novel. If I had put the story of the boy killing my dog - and that was Eric also, what a little monster he was! - in a novel, even if I took it directly from life, it would be fiction.” IfsWritingLittlesStoriesWould BeDifferencesFictionBoysNovelDogKillingMonstersMemoirMy DogEricDoing Me Author:Paul Auster
“Math-thinking, I would say, encourages flipping and substituting letters in words (in the novel, one of the boys double-majors in math and myth, for example, and his twin cracks a joke about the father's handwriting that morphs "cacography" into "dadography").” ThinkingFatherBoysNovelExampleMajorsJokesLettersMathMythCracksTwinsHandwriting Author:Mary Kay Zuravleff
“I was reading Raymond Chandler very much with the feminist eye. In six of his seven novels, it's the woman who presents herself in a sexual way, who is the main bad person. And then you start reading more fiction, whether crime fiction or straight fiction, it's just bad girls trying to make good boys do bad things, going all the way back to Adam and Eve. The woman that thou gavest me made me do it, Adam says to God.” WayTryingPersonsMadeEyeGirlReadingFictionBoysNovelCrimeSixSevenFeministBad ThingsAdamCrime FictionAdam And EveBad GirlGood BoyReading More Author:Sara Paretsky
“When I first went to Pittsburgh, I had never been there before, and we hadn't even decided to shoot there yet. I just went to see the location of Michael Chabon's novel. Once there, I became aware that Pittsburgh is a "wonder boy," in the narrow sense of the term, just as the human characters are.” FirstsHumansCharacterTermWonderBoysNovelDecidedLocationPittsburgh Author:Curtis Hanson
“I thought, "If I could bring these characters [Wonder Boys] to life and lead the audience to react the same way I did, this could be a really special picture." Then I read Michael's [Chabon] novel and got even more enthusiastic about it.” IfsWayCharacterWonderBoysNovelAudienceSpecialIf I CouldEnthusiastic Author:Curtis Hanson
“Until I was a junior in high school, I was a "boy scientist" type and expected to go into chemistry. Then I discovered the humanities. I read the plays of Shakespeare voraciously, some novels, such as Pasternack's Dr. Zhivago and Sinclair Lewis' Main Street, and I got into philosophy by reading Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.” PhilosophyPlaySchoolHumanityReadingBoysNovelStreetsTypeHigh SchoolScientistExpectedChemistryDrsJuniorsMain Street Author:Allen W. Wood