“To write a novel, you begin with what you can see and then you add what came before and what came after.

… You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it.”

“You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing.”

“Writing a novel is not very difficult: you simply write ten pages a day for a month and then you have a novel.”

“You have to wait for your mind to catch up with whatever it is it’s working on; then you can write a novel.”

“What do you do when Mom leaves you alone like this? (Kat)
I write romance novels. (Acheron)”

“All you can write is what you see.”

“Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say. Or even if there is such a thing as a thing to say. Limit these thoughts to no more than ten minutes a day; like sit-ups, they can make you thin”

“Bad books on writing tell you to "WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW", a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.”

“Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!”

“Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”