focus Quotes

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

I think the next thing I publish will be for children, but I don't really want to be held to that because I also know what my next book for adults will be, and I really like that, too, so it depends. I've always had more than one thing going.

If you're holding out for universal popularity, I'm afraid you will be in this cabin for a very long time.

If you love something - and there are things that I love - you do want more and more and more of it, but that's not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write.

No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn't sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours' writing. Nothing.

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day's work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

If you love something - and there are things that I love - you do want more and more and more of it, but that's not the way to produce good work.

I've never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.