The biggest influence on my books was the fact that I had worked in a newspaper for so long. In a daily paper, you learn to write very quickly; there is no time to sit and brood about what you are going to say.


Maeve Binchy

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

The best thing you can do for your kids is to show them God working in you on a daily basis.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
if I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all since there is a ten...
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
To me, the newspaper business was a way to learn about life and how things worked in the real world ...
CARL HIAASEN
There are no atheists in foxholes, they say, and I was a foxhole atheist for a long time. But after ...
PETER STEELE
How do you know if something is real? That’s easy. Does it change you? Does it form you? Does it g...
C. JOYBELL C.
Writing fiction, there are no limits to what you write as long as it increases the value of the pape...
BUDDY EBSEN
if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
What I say is that there are not half a dozen papers in the United States which tamper with the news...
JOSEPH PULITZER
My gut feeling is that paper and ink are going to be with us for a long time yet, and in substantial...
FRED SABERHAGEN
I think that many people will intentionally overlook all of the lifeless facts about their relations...
C. JOYBELL C.
What is it that makes you so angry, bothers you so deeply, that you're compelled to act?
CRAIG GROESCHEL
How lucky I am to have known somebody and something that saying goodbye to is so damned awful.
EVANS G. VALENS
I've been writing for a long time, and I've loved comic books for a long time - forever - bu...
YURI LOWENTHAL
Because I worked as a newspaper reporter for about 14 years before attempting my first novel, I lear...
GERALDINE BROOKS
Television and comic books are, and continue to be, probably the biggest influence in my life. It...
GENE SIMMONS
I was such a sullen, angry, sad kid. I'm sure there are writers who have had happy childhoods, b...
ISABEL ALLENDE
Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you're here and nothing you do will chang...
JAMES CLAVELL
I write for a radio show that, no matter what, will go on the air Saturday at five o'clock centr...
GARRISON KEILLOR
I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes...
LORD BRABAZON
I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes...
LORD BRABAZON
There is so little time for us all, I need to be able to say what I want quickly and to as many peop...
MARC BOLAN
Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an u...
DAVID GUTERSON
The biggest influence? I've had several at different times - but the biggest for me was Bob Dyla...
JACKSON BROWNE
The love you get, is equal to the love you give.
BEN OAK
Some people never take a chance and never know what it's like to live life to the full.
CHLOE THURLOW
My grandfather was a newspaper publisher and his paper had all the comics in NYC, so some of my earl...
RICK MOODY
In a day and age where it seems like women want to be with unstable, psychotic, manipulative freaks;...
C. JOYBELL C.
The story goes as the line follow... alone... loony....
...

That's what's happening....
DEYTH BANGER
I was just upset because they were so unprofessional to me. For us to be in financial ruins in this ...
DEMETRIUS CARRINGTON
Miranda Writes: Anything you say or do may be used for or against you within a story by a writer
JAZZ FEYLYNN
I write in a very strange way. Things are very fragmentary for a very long time, and then they come ...
TODD RUNDGREN
I don't want to sit here and say anything negative about my time there. I think the best thing to sa...
JOE BORCHARD
The thing was always, as every story you write has a built-in problem, was: Was it too personal. Tha...
CAMERON CROWE
If you learn to really sit with loneliness and embrace it for the gift that it is…an opportunity t...
MANDY HALE
A Ritual to Read to Each Other


If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and...
WILLIAM STAFFORD
Here is one fact 1 minute to finish the class, 1 day to die, one day behind that fact, one day in th...
DEYTH BANGER
Beaming into the thick of a tree without becoming a lifelong tree hugger was a tricky business. A pr...
CHRISTINA ENGELA
What's so crazy is when you give interviews to reporters that don't really care too much for...
FLOYD MAYWEATHER, JR.
A tooth for a tooth, will make the world's inhabitants a people without teeth
SOTONYE ANGA
Eventually I came across another passage. This is what it said:
I am not commanding you, but I ...
NICHOLAS SPARKS
To kill a mockingbird. If you haven't read it, I think you should because it is very interesting.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
I will never forget the vision of Jamie walking towards me.
NICHOLAS SPARKS
As these images were going through my head, my breathing suddenly went still. I looked at Jamie, the...
NICHOLAS SPARKS
You don't have to learn much out of books, it's like if you want to learn about cows, you go milk on...
HARPER LEE
You can't really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them.
HARPER LEE
The door might not be opened to a woman again for a long, long time, and I had a kind of duty to oth...
FRANCES PERKINS
No publisher in America improved a paper so quickly on so grand a scale, took a paper that was margi...
DAVID HALBERSTAM
I think the greatest compliment I get is when people say, 'Thank you' to us after a show, ... The mu...
JAY SIEGEL
I still had this idea that there was a whole world of marvelous golden people somewhere, as far ahea...
RICHARD YATES
Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.
EMILE M. CIORAN
If you least understand the essence of timely and courageously saying no to what you have to say no ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
If you least understand the essence of timely and courageously saying no to what you have to say no ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
I had a dream about you last night. You were at my door. We had forgotten what we used to fight abou...
CRYSTAL WOODS
what keeps me going is the fact that there is someone out there who wants to be in my "shoes"..yes,m...
PHILLIP BUYONDO
I mean, what can you say about how you write your books? What I mean is, first you've got to ...
AGATHA CHRISTIE
You never know what's going to happen. My mother was an English teacher. If someone had told her...
TONY DUNGY
I also felt that Ron and Hermione would have gotten divorced. I'm sorry, I just do. The end of Harry...
JOSS WHEDON
And so, irritants, it is with this that I leave you. You are spared so that you can think of what it...
JHONEN VáSQUEZ
A new day is here! yesterday is gone! tomorrow is preparing to come! but why is today here?
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
I had a newspaper in Flint, Michigan called the 'Flint Voice,' and so it was a, you know, un...
MICHAEL MOORE
I am not going to tell you my name, not yet at any rate.' A queer half-knowing, half-humorous look c...
J.R.R. TOLKIEN
Use your heart. Understand. Learn to see things
in the now, not as they were or will be, or as ...
E.J. PATTEN
You learn just by trying and experimenting. By the time I was 14, I had my own comic strip in the Ka...
MORT WALKER
He shook his head. "The next time I hear a women going on about how neurotic men are, I'm going to r...
SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS
There is no objection to the proposal: in order to learn to be a poet, I shall try to write a sonnet...
JAMES FENTON
All I can say is you don't know what's going to be on the front page of tomorrow's newsp...
DAVID STERN
But how?" my students ask. "How do you actually do it?"
You sit down, I say. You try to sit do...
ANNE LAMOTT
What will make you a star is in you
SOTONYE ANGA
When I was excited about life, I didn't want to write at all. I've never written when I was happy. I...
JEAN RHYS
You have to set boundaries and say no. The biggest challenge with part-time work is that the work cr...
JENNIFER ALLYN
I have a dream, I have a vision, I have a mission, I have to do something, I will do this at this ti...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
I've lived in L.A. for a long time, and they say, 'If you sit in a barber's shop for lon...
ROBBIE WILLIAMS
The scientific method gives us information by testing and repeating observable things so that we can...
LEWIS N. ROE
No matter how many books you've written, whenever you sit down to write a new book, you always f...
CASSANDRA CLARE
I can sit up here and say I don't get it. There needs to be time to learn it. I think it was a littl...
JOHNNY WEIR
Plunging in “truths” about God is like walking on the bottom of a sea that is not there, searchi...
MARIANA FULGER
What it takes is to actually write: not to think about it, not to imagine it, not to talk about it, ...
LUANNE RICE
I've worked on movies that are being rewritten as you go, but you take so long and so much time ...
LUKE WILSON
Whatever hardships there have been in my life I still live in a very privileged position. Fear is no...
JAMES FREY
So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ag...
VIRGINIA WOOLF
I haven't got time to read books.'

'What do you mean you haven't got time? What are you d...
PAULO COELHO
OF writing many books there is no end;
And I who have written much in prose and verse
For ...
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
In my time,” he said, “they believed in witches. Are you a witch, Honor, that you make me say th...
NALINI SINGH
The whole time my mindset was always to try and get better in spite of what was going on, and in spi...
WILLIAM GREEN
You don't know what it's like to grow up with a mother who never said a positive thing in her life, ...
JUNOT DíAZ
As I sit and reminisce about my childhood I think of experiences I would love to replicate for my da...
ALISHIA DUNCANSON
I copied the address into my address book, erasing an earlier one that had not been good for very lo...
LYDIA DAVIS
Friendship is a double-edged sword one side it can be great and true but the other side it spells be...
GARY F EVANS...
If you take a long-term view of the market, you sit there quietly and you believe that over time, (s...
BOB SCHMIDT
Name the book that made the biggest impression on you. I bet you read it before you hit puberty. In ...
GARY PAULSEN
I was angry about the fact that my father would beat my mother on a daily basis, that my mother woul...
RICK JAMES
I had written a book. For various reasons, the publishing industry had decided that my book was goin...
AKHIL SHARMA
When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I wr...
GEORGE ORWELL
Like books you will never have the chance to read, there are languages you do not know, and you'...
JAMES SALTER
You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace."
I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl...
TAMMARA WEBBER
As a memorial, I'd like a statue. Not of me, but a little modern statue, in marble or bronze, ma...
MAEVE BINCHY
Every different social group that I encountered had its different set of rules, so you learn very qu...
JULIANNE MOORE
I hope this wakes up the people who don't understand what this is all about. This is going to be on ...
BUD KEENE
Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Some read to learn, some to laugh, and some to live.
JOYCE RACHELLE

More Maeve Binchy

There are no makeovers in my books. The ugly duckling does not become a beautiful swan. She becomes ...
MAEVE BINCHY
Most people, once the money started getting bigger, thought we would buy a millionaire's house l...
MAEVE BINCHY
Nobody is ordinary if you know where to look.
MAEVE BINCHY
I once got a huge, expensive flower arrangement from a person I didn't like, who sent it out of ...
MAEVE BINCHY
When I was being brought up, we weren't allowed to wallow in self-pity, which was a thoroughly g...
MAEVE BINCHY
I had a very happy childhood, which is unsuitable if you're going to be an Irish writer.
MAEVE BINCHY
I have an irregular heartbeat, so that means a fair amount of medication - and I have blood pressure...
MAEVE BINCHY
I was the big, bossy older sister, full of enthusiasms, mad fantasies, desperate urges to be famous,...
MAEVE BINCHY
I have been luckier than anyone I know or even heard of. I had a very happy childhood, a good educat...
MAEVE BINCHY
I once tried to write a novel about revenge. It's the only book I didn't finish. I couldn...
MAEVE BINCHY
In my books, there is no 'ugly duckling turning into a beautiful swan' syndrome because if y...
MAEVE BINCHY
I'm particularly fond of boned chicken breasts with a little garlic under the flesh and cooked i...
MAEVE BINCHY
I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turn into co...
MAEVE BINCHY
Everybody is a hero in their own story if you just look.
MAEVE BINCHY
I never wanted to write. I just wrote letters home from a kibbutz in Israel to reassure my parents t...
MAEVE BINCHY
Success is not like a cake that needs to be divided. It's more like a heap of stones - a cairn. ...
MAEVE BINCHY
In my stories, whenever there's somebody wonderful and charming and bright and intelligent, that...
MAEVE BINCHY
Women who start out as ugly ducklings don't become beautiful swans. What they mainly become is c...
MAEVE BINCHY
Never mind money; the gifts of time and skill call into being the richest marketplace in the world.
MAEVE BINCHY
Happiness is in our own hearts. I have no regrets of anything in the past. I'm totally cheerful ...
MAEVE BINCHY
As a memorial, I'd like a statue. Not of me, but a little modern statue, in marble or bronze, ma...
MAEVE BINCHY
We are all the heroes and heroines of our own lives. Our love stories are amazingly romantic; our lo...
MAEVE BINCHY
My mother hoped I would meet a nice doctor or barrister or accountant who would marry me and take me...
MAEVE BINCHY
My family life reads a bit like 'Little House on the Prairie.' I was big sister to Joan, Ren...
MAEVE BINCHY
The great thing about getting older is that you become more mellow. Things aren't as black and w...
MAEVE BINCHY
I suppose, to be fair, I don't miss the energy of youth very much - because I was never fit. So ...
MAEVE BINCHY
Nobody ever wins by the cavalry coming to rescue you. It isn't a question of you're happy if...
MAEVE BINCHY
I am not a member of Fat Liberation, nor do I think that obesity is healthy. But I do believe that i...
MAEVE BINCHY
I have always believed that life is too short for rows and disagreements. Even if I think I'm ri...
MAEVE BINCHY
I didn't have a sweet tooth, but I liked butter, and I liked sauces, and I liked wine... and cur...
MAEVE BINCHY
My mother was a trained nurse, and she'd tell me that patients would fight as they were administ...
MAEVE BINCHY
I've been very lucky and I have a happy old age with good family and friends still around.
MAEVE BINCHY
I'm mainly an airport author, and if you're trying to take your mind off the journey, you...
MAEVE BINCHY
I'll understand if you don't want me. But I will be heartbroken. You are all I ever dreamed of and h...
MAEVE BINCHY
When my sister Joan arrived, I asked if I could swap her for a rabbit. When I think what a marvellou...
MAEVE BINCHY
When I was younger, I avoided exercise or anything strenuous. I didn't even enjoy walking. As I ...
MAEVE BINCHY
I don't say I was 'proceeding down a thoroughfare;' I say I 'walked down the road...
MAEVE BINCHY
If I see Marian Keyes' books or Patricia Scanlan's books given more prominence than mine in ...
MAEVE BINCHY
I have been blessed with friends who do things rather than buy things: friends who will change books...
MAEVE BINCHY
I am a big, confident, happy woman who had a loving childhood, a pleasant career, and a wonderful ma...
MAEVE BINCHY
I didn't get excited by weight loss, and since I was already happy being fat, I couldn't see...
MAEVE BINCHY
I used to dream of some kind of way that you could carry a phone with you - but I never thought I wo...
MAEVE BINCHY
Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn, Im dunklen Laub die Goldorangen glühn.
MAEVE BINCHY
Things aren't always easy, but you just have to keep going and don't let the small stuff bog...
STELLA MAEVE
These reports are deeply worrying. Asylum seekers are being treated as packages to be processed and ...
MAEVE SHERLOCK
Thousands of people would be only to happy to contribute to the UK economy if they were given some r...
MAEVE SHERLOCK
This is a harsh and ill thought out policy based on the flawed logic that making families destitute ...
MAEVE SHERLOCK
It will be cheaper, more humane and more efficient.
MAEVE SHERLOCK