Top 100 Writing Research Quotes
#1. Before I start a project, I always ask myself the following question. Why is this book worth a year of my life? There needs to be something about the theme, the technique, or the research that makes the time spent on it worthwhile.
David Morrell
#2. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, my patients will not even be postponed. Another surgeon would step in and take over. The reason to do research and writing is that it at least makes me feel not entirely replaceable. If I didn't write, I don't know if I would do surgery.
Atul Gawande
#3. When it comes to sermon writing, generally there are two problems. Some preachers love the research stage but hate the writing, and they start writing too late. Others don't like doing research, so they move way too fast to the writing part.
John Ortberg
#4. The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.
A.S. Byatt
#5. Writing is more fun when you have a partner, so find friends who share your research interests. Two authors can write faster, can complement expertise, can help with hard decisions, and understand context of decisions made.
Paul J. Silvia
#6. I usually don't have to do a lot of research in my work, as I'm writing about something I'm already familiar with.
Amy Bloom
#7. A doctorate study is the passion for extensive research, reading, thinking and writing.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#8. History makes my mouth water - and that is as much because of the voids in what documentation remains as what is set in stone.
Sara Sheridan
#9. I cannot say how strongly I object to people using other people's writing as research. Research is non-fiction, especially for horror, fantasy, science fiction. Do not take your research from other people's fiction. Just don't.
Laurell K. Hamilton
#10. I do like the research part of writing, I must admit.
C.J. Box
#11. I'd studied 16th century science and magic. I thought it was strange that people were interested in the same kinds of things my research was about. The more I thought about it, the more intriguing it became and pretty soon I was writing a novel about a reluctant witch and a 1500-year-old vampire.
Deborah Harkness
#13. What is generally missed, is that my writing financed research.
L. Ron Hubbard
#14. My writing process is a mix of research, personal experiences, washing the dishes, raising kids while thinking - then writing.
Jean Craighead George
#16. I teach classes 28 weeks of the year, but the rest of the time I do research and write books. While I'm writing a book, which I probably do two out of every three years, it's like having a second job. I squeeze in the hours when I can.
Steven Pinker
#17. All my books take a long time to research. I spend several months researching before I start writing, and in the middle of writing I often have to stop and look up stuff. At my local library, I am one of the best customers! The research takes several months.
Linda Sue Park
#18. I've left it unedited, which means you'll get to see the [brackets] I insert to remind myself to research things or fix things later. In this case, I fixed things by writing a different story.
Mary Robinette Kowal
#19. It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days.
Alan Furst
#20. I have to do more close research and fact checking for the science fiction. This is not however to say that writing good fantasy does not involve doing good research.
Sarah Zettel
#21. You've got to make an effort to get the details right, because even through someone picks it up and knows it's a novel, they know someone's made it up and they know it's not real, if you make a small mistake they will cease to imaginatively engage with the story.
Sara Sheridan
#22. The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.
Samuel Johnson
#23. The title which I most covet is that of teacher. The writing of a research paper and the teaching of freshman calculus, and everything in between, falls under this rubric. Happy is the person who comes to understand something and then gets to explain it.
Marshall A. Cohen
#24. I've often been accused of making anthropology into literature, but anthropology is also field research. Writing is central to it.
Clifford Geertz
#25. I do a lot of research for my books. I can't possibly know all the things I write about and I love learning new things. I spend hours and hours doing research in books, libraries and online. [Once] I traveled to the reservation to get the settings and the flavor of the place down right.
Linda Conrad
#26. While there may be 'bad' days - even 'bad' weeks - keep going, write something else, go and read (research!) or take a complete break, whatever works for you. But in the long run, persevere, and keep on writing. A blank page won't write itself!
Sherry Gloag
#27. He held up his hands in surrender. "I'm not here to start trouble. I am just doing some research for my thesis."
"If you don't get out of this bar, you are going to be writing your thesis via Ouija board.
Jessica Fortunato
#28. I like learning things, and I like that writing comics is an excuse to look into new stuff and research and learn new things and hopefully put them in books.
Charles Soule
#29. If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data - it doesn't mean the ad is written. Then you've got to close the door and write something - that is the moment of truth which we all try to postpone as long as possible.
David Ogilvy
#30. You can spend a day in a library and feel: 'Great, I've done a day's work.' But it's only research, not writing.
Richard Flanagan
#31. For me, the historical and genealogical library is the one I use. I'm working on, I'll say, it's a time travel novel. I haven't written very much of it. That's the dirty secret of the Cullman center: The writers don't write their fiction there, they just do their research.
Andrew Sean Greer
#33. Now I'm writing about contemporary Los Angeles from memory. My process was to hang out, observe, research what I was writing about, and almost immediately go back to my office and write those sections. So it was a very close transfer between observation and writing.
Michael Connelly
#34. I thought my life was mapped out. Research, living in the forest, teaching and writing. But in '86 I went to a conference and realised the chimpanzees were disappearing. I had worldwide recognition and a gift of communication. I had to use them.
Jane Goodall
#35. Writing a biography is a delicate - not a reckless - process, where the end result, if done properly, is simply the truth revealed. This delicate and intricate research process has never before been done for Bob Crane, a man with a story worth telling.
Carol M. Ford
#36. Scientific fraud, plagiarism, and ghost writing are increasingly being reported in the news media, creating the impression that misconduct has become a widespread and omnipresent evil in scientific research.
Heinrich Rohrer
#37. Researching books gets you into nothing but trouble.
Sara Sheridan
#38. Research and writing are lonely occupations. It is easy to become discouraged in solitary confinement.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#39. Writing an encyclopedia is hard. To do anywhere near a decent job, you have to know a great deal of information about an incredibly wide variety of subjects. Writing so much text is difficult, but doing all the background research seems impossible.
Aaron Swartz
#40. Becoming Richard Pryor is a compulsively readable book that sets a new gold standard for American biography. Scott Scaul's research is extraordinary; his writing is taut, elegant, and insightful; and he captures both the hilarity and pain that made Richard Pryor such a towering figure,
Debby Applegate
#41. I had been writing for about twelve years. I knew pretty well how you could find things out, but I had never been trained in an academic way how to go about the research.
David McCullough
#42. Somebody said writing is easy, you just sit down at your typewriter and open a vein. It depends on the book. Some, I have to do quite a lot of research, which I like. Others are much closer to me.
Anne Rivers Siddons
#43. Anybody can do research. The plotting of the novel, writing the ending before you write anything else, which I always do - I don't know that everybody can do that. That's the hard part.
John Irving
#44. When you do enough research, the story almost writes itself. Lines of development spring loose and you'll have choices galore.
Robert McKee
#45. A word out of place or an interesting choice of vocabulary can spawn a whole character.
Sara Sheridan
#46. Writing is incidental to my primary objective, which is spinning a good yarn. I view myself as a storyteller more than a writer. The story - and hence the extensive research that goes into each one of my books - is much more important than the words that I use to narrate it.
Ashwin Sanghi
#47. I like to do the research of history and the creativity of writing fiction. I am creating this thing which I think is twice as difficult as writing either history or fiction.
Philippa Gregory
#48. Having instant feedback on twitter to research material I'm considering is an enormous help.
Sara Sheridan
#49. Interviews, research, more interviews, fact-checking, writing, rewriting - and then, in an instant, it is over,
Hanya Yanagihara
#50. [The Center for Industrial Progress'] model allows us to keep conflicts of interest to an absolute minimum as we do our research and writing. As for our relationship with the fossil fuel industry, it's the same as everyone else - they pay for our ideas, we never accept money to voice theirs.
Alex Epstein
#51. My very small part in WATCHMEN is that, every now and then, Alan would phone me: 'Neil, you're an educated man. Where does it say ... '
He would need a quote from the Bible, or an essay about owls. I was his occasional research assistant.
Neil Gaiman
#52. You don't market-research a novel; you really are writing it for yourself. It's a hobby, in many ways. The problem becomes what you do when you're confronted by criticism. You just don't listen to it.
Bret Easton Ellis
#53. One of the things I love most about acting, that I get to do research and read books, but it's just for me and I don't have to write about it.
Ruby Bentall
#54. Research material can turn up anywhere - in a dusty old letter in an archive, a journal or some old photographs you find in a charity shop.
Sara Sheridan
#55. Sometimes writer's block is no more than a signal that you have not done enough research.
Sophy Burnham
#56. I enjoy research as much as writing so I try to make my stories as fact-based as possible, which I think helps them seem more authentic.
Raymond Buckland
#57. I love writing, and just as much, I love undertaking research.
Sara Sheridan
#58. Research is so vital to a great story. Know what you're writing about!
Beem Weeks
#59. For 'Boxers & Saints,' I started by reading a couple of articles on the Internet, then writing a really rough outline, then getting more hardcore into the research. I went to a university library once a week for a year, year and a half.
Gene Luen Yang
#60. A number of bloggers in economics and the financial sector have risen to prominence through the sheer strength of their work. Note it was not their family connections nor ties to Ivy League schools or elite banks, but rather the strength of their research, analysis and writing.
Barry Ritholtz
#61. My writing process hasn't changed - it's is the same whether I'm working on a Y.A. novel or, as now, a new novel for adults. A lot of reading, a lot of research if the subject warrants it, a lot of sticky notes and scraps of paper - and get to work.
Kathe Koja
#62. I have been very afraid of writing about other cultures and countries. I've been worried about getting the research wrong. I ask a lot of questions. I try to visit the area. If I'm not able to do that, I search out people from that country who live elsewhere and ask questions.
Uwem Akpan
#63. It's entirely possible to base an entire book on a long-forgotten letter.
Sara Sheridan
#64. Research to me is as important or more important than the writing. It is the foundation upon which the book is built.
Leon Uris
#65. Sometimes I write less than I'd like but do research. Other times, editor's notes or a copy-edited manuscript or page proofs for a forthcoming novel mean that I need to put my attentions elsewhere for a day or two, but I always come back to writing.
Jane Lindskold
#66. I think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information.
Irvine Welsh
#67. I remember calling the council's cemetery department to ask about body decomposition in different soil types. Once they had verified that I was a novelist and not a sicko, they were extremely helpful.
Sara Sheridan
#68. When you've got good writing, you can kind of give up all the research, in a way, and start just following the emotional integrity of the journey of your character.
Linus Roache
#69. I like that it's challenging - that when I'm writing, I feel as if I'm pouring everything I have into the story until there's nothing left and I have to begin thinking about a new world and set of circumstances to research and explore.
Molly Antopol
#70. Search your own life for the story only you can tell. The best thing about writing from life is that you can be sure of using original material. And no research is needed beyond the time you spend looking deep inside your own heart.
Elizabeth Held Forsyth
#71. Adam Berenson knows how to compose, organize an ensemble, do musical research, play solo and trio piano, write for musical journals, and enlist others to his cause. A very fine musician.
Paul Bley
#72. I typically don't adopt the ascetic approach. In part, that's because I do use the Net for research even as I'm writing (to check facts, or so on). But I think it's also because I find the possibility of distraction comforting.
James Surowiecki
#73. The research. It is always the best part of writing. And, of course, it is the great excuse to travel.
Michael Scott
#74. Well I've been writing books. So that, by its nature, is kind of a solitary occupation. And from time to time I have research help, but mostly I've done those completely on my own.
Caroline Kennedy
#75. I talked to members of my family, and did some personal research that didn't really have anything to do with the time and place I was writing about, but that gave me a feeling of the experience of being black in a time and place where it was very difficult to be black.
Octavia Butler
#76. I work on one book at a time. And yes, I am immersed. Six days a week for four to six hours a day. In between books, I stop writing for as much as two to three months, but during that time, I do research and think, plot and plan the book.
M.J. Rose
#77. I'm a novelist by trade and my job is to write a story rather than reconstruct actual events.
Sara Sheridan
#78. Doctoral training is devoted almost entirely to learning to do research, even though most Ph.Ds who enter academic life spend far more time teaching than they do conducting experiments or writing books.
Derek Bok
#79. I do apologize for writing by hand - and so badly. I shall soon be like Helen Thomas, notoriously illegible. In her last letter only two words stood out plain: 'Blood pressure.' Subsequent research demonstrated that what she had actually written was 'Beloved friends.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#80. On a very personal level, I have fond memories of spending a lot of time in the Library of Congress working on my collection of poems 'Native Guard.' I was there over a summer doing research in the archives and then writing in the reading room at the Jefferson building.
Natasha Trethewey
#81. I enjoy the research and love actually creating the words. There's not too much I find a drudge when it comes to writing.
Tracie Peterson
#82. My writing has to support more than my research habit, but I love to curl up with a book about some dusty corner of history.
Lynn Abbey
#83. I've been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core, and then you go back and research it at the end.
Jami Attenberg
#84. I've known several cases of writers who decide to write about something and they research the hell out of it and when they're ready to write, they can't move because they are so burdened. I start writing. Whatever I need somehow comes to hand.
E.L. Doctorow
#85. A paucity of material can open up just as many possibilities.
Sara Sheridan
#86. Before I start writing, before I have an idea of where and when the story happens, I research it thoroughly.
Isabel Allende
#87. So research is a terribly imperfect science, and you learn an awful lot more after you've published a book, because people keep writing to you and saying, 'Oh, gosh, I was related to such and such a character and I have a letter in my possession.'
Simon Winchester
#88. I find research fascinating and always conduct some before I begin writing, and then fill in the rest as needed. I read stacks of books and also had the opportunity to travel to England to do more research.
Julie Klassen
#89. It has taken me years of struggle, hard work, and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.
Isadora Duncan
#90. I don't believe in writing anything that I don't know about or haven't researched about personally. I like to transport the reader to places, and in order to do that I have to do the research.
Jackie Collins
#91. For me, any book I'm writing is also a chance to get in and research and read and learn things that I maybe only knew a little bit about before.
Tad Williams
#92. Once upon a time, I was a workaholic clocking more than 80 hours per week. That changed after I began to write. I now work only around 35 hours per week. I do not work on weekends because these are the days that I use for research as well as for my writing.
Ashwin Sanghi
#93. Often I'm struck by something that I read; then I go and research it a little more, especially if I begin a poem, and I find out that I need to know more. Then I usually get intrigued and excited about whatever it is I'm writing about.
Pattiann Rogers
#94. Before writing, I start with a series of questions, specific things I need to know before I can write the book ... That list grows and changes as I do more and more research. But when I've answered the bulk of the questions, I begin to write ...
David B. Coe
#95. Through the misguided notion that writing about flying was easy, I had McCone become a pilot. When I learned that research in books wasn't enough, I forced myself to take lessons.
Marcia Muller
#96. Sometimes I eavesdrop on people. I could rationalize it - oh, this is good anthropological research for characters I'm writing - but it's basically just nosiness. It also helps me gauge where I'm at: Am I normal?
Mindy Kaling
#97. Authors like reading. Go figure. So it's not surprising that we sometimes bog down in the research stage of new writing projects.
Edward M. Lerner
#98. I felt differently about her [Gypsy Rose Lee] during every phase of the research and writing process. Often, I felt incredibly sorry for her; she had an extremely difficult childhood and a complicated 'to say the least' relationship with her family, her mother especially.
Karen Abbott
#99. I like to do books in which a lot of the research and the writing and the thinking revolves around something American.
Bill Bryson
#100. Occasionally I find a travel book that is both illuminating and entertaining, where vivid writing and research replace self-indulgence and sloppy prose.
Arthur Smith
