Researching Quotes

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining... researching... talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing. (E. L. Doctorow)

I've spent a lot of time researching the subject and government deception. So to be involved in Star Trek is perfect for me. I enjoy meeting the fans and discussing my interests with them.

Dwight Schultz

I think that's because believable action is based on authenticity, and accuracy is very important to me. I always spend time researching my novels, exploring the customs and attitudes of the county I'm using for their setting.

Sidney Sheldon

What I'm exploring right now is the subject of my own mortality. It's an area that I'm curious about, and I'm researching it to see if there's a photographic essay in it for me. If images don't start to come, I'll go to something else.

Leonard Nimoy

I was researching a different World War II story when I came across an article in the 'Chicago Tribune' from June 1945 that knocked me for a loop. The article explained that a military plane had crashed in an impossibly remote valley of New Guinea that had been nicknamed Shangri-La.

Mitchell Zuckoff

Suppose I was researching, not the life of some genius philosopher with his books and articles and a wake of articulate friends and acquaintances, but rather, a homeless kid in and out of mental hospitals for chronic masturbation and indecent exposure?...How would I even start?

Samuel R. Delany

There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing.

David McCullough

I spend a year at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, researching market approaches to air pollution control.

Gale Norton

I slept in the bedroom used by Sabine Baring-Gould's wife when I was researching 'The Moor,' and later the Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor.

Laurie R. King

I guess there's a sort of cycle with writing books. There's all the researching and then the imagining and writing - which is the real job - and then there's always a period when the book comes out and you have to lift your head and venture out.

Monica Ali

I've seen people spend days, if not months, researching and gathering data, but only at the end did they finally figure out what they were really looking for; then they have to redo a lot of stuff. If after a day or so you force yourself to put together your tentative conclusions, then you'll have guidance for the rest of your research. (Robert Pozen)

Researching real people and doing them, I think, is harder than anything else. You don't want to do a caricature of them and you don't want to do an impression. You just want to do the best you can, in terms of presenting their views and a general impression of the guy. That's the hardest thing to do, real people.

Stephen Root

It is my solemn duty to stay up all night researching and writing the history of these three hapless youngsters, but you may be more comfortable getting a good night's sleep. In that case, you should probably choose some other book.

Daniel Handler

Unfortunately, I have dedicated my life to researching and recording the sad tale of the Baudelaire Orphans. There is no reason for you to dedicate yourself to such things, and you might instead dedicate yourself to letting this slippery book slip from your hands into a nearby trash receptacle, or deep pit.

Daniel Handler

If anybody wanted to photograph my life, they'd get bored in a day. 'Heres Matt at home learning his lines. Here's Matt researching in aisle six of his local library'. A few hours of that and they'd go home.

Matt Damon

I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read. My principle in researching a novel is 'Read like a butterfly, write like a bee', and if this story contains any honey, it is entirely because of the quality of the nectar I found in the work of better writers.

Philip Pullman

Researching 'Lone Wolf,' I was amazed at how thoughtful and intelligent these animals are. There has never been a documented attack against a human by a wolf that wasn't provoked by the human.

Jodi Picoult

Now, I - for several years while I was researching this book, I felt quite obsessed by thoughts about sentencing, punishment, how judges arrive at their decisions.

Helen Garner

When you're researching things that have happened, the clear narrative arc is not there already. This is the problem of writing nonfiction for me - writing nonfiction which is about serious subjects and has serious political and social points to make, yet which is meant to be popular to a degree - what happens when the facts don't fit a convenient narrative arc? I guess that for a lot of nonfiction writers that is a central challenge.

Misha Glenny

Sense of smell, of course, is only one of those dog qualities that can't be replicated or improved upon. I've been researching dogs in warfare for my book about 'Rin Tin Tin,' and I've read many accounts of their heroics: carrying messages through battle, alerting troops to enemy planes, and even parachuting behind enemy lines.

Susan Orlean

The reason I know about 'Tomb Raider' is from when I was researching 'Elephant.' It was 1999, and I was trying to research the Columbine-massacre kids, and they had played video games, and I, at the time, had never really seen one. It was a world I didn't know. (Gus Van Sant)

Human spirit, things that aren't tangible, fascinate me, so I'm always researching mind, spirit, soul.

Jada Pinkett Smith

I spend about eight months researching and outlining my book.

Jeffery Deaver

I spend eight months outlining and researching the novel before I begin to write a single word of the prose.

Jeffery Deaver

Time spent researching varies from book to book. Some novels require months, even years of research, others very little. I try to do most of my research before I begin but inevitably questions emerge during the writing.

Jonathan Kellerman

Previous
1 (Current)
2
3
Next