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To be a writer, you must be a reader, yet as many as 30 per cent of my writing students were not readers.

My father told us all the time: to become a good writer takes writing. Because the more you do it, the better you get at it. It's like bull-riding. You can't do it once, you know. You've got to practice it and practice it.

I've been writing for as long as I can remember, and reading even before that. My mom still has stories that I wrote when I was in kindergarten. I was a reader and a re-reader. That's the main reason I became a writer.

I think you become a writer when you stop writing for yourself or your teachers and start thinking about readers.

Most writers can write three times as many books as I have and still live a life.

If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.

I cannot recall any moment of clarity about becoming a writer. I always liked to read. That's what did it.

The odd thing about being a writer is you do tend to lose yourself in your books. Sometimes it seems like real life is flickering by and you're hardly a part of it. You remember the events in your books better than you remember the events that actually took place when you were writing them.

I've lost track of the number of people who want to be writers but never actually write anything. Talking about writing, dreaming about writing, can be very fun, but it won't get a book written. You've got to write.

I haven't always been a writer and I suppose I tiptoed around the idea of writing full time, because it's so isolating.