I tend to start at 9 o'clock in the morning and write until 3. Those are my best hours. They fit the other rhythms of the world. So I write for six hours pretty much without any breaks.

I am a morning writer I am writing at eight-thirty in longhand and I keep at it until twelve-thirty when I go for a swim. Then I come back have lunch and read in the afternoon until I take my walk for the next day's writing.

I spent every night until four in the morning on my dissertation until I came to the point when I could not write another word not even the next letter. I went to bed. Eight o'clock the next morning I was up writing again.

Those golden minutes before you are completely awake when your mind is just drifting you have no censorship you are ready to develop any kind of idea. That's when I come up with the best and worst ideas. That is the privilege of being a writer - that you can stay in bed for an hour in the morning and it's work time.

What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism.

Most songs have meager beginnings. You wake up in the morning you throw on your suspenders and you subvocalize and just think. They seem to form like calcium. I can't think of a story right off the bat that was that interesting. I write things on the back of my hand usually and sing into a tape recorder.

I was a government employee in the morning and a writer in the evening.

I wake up early in the morning and walk for an hour. If I have something to write I prefer to write in the morning until midday and in the afternoon I eat.

I write when I'm inspired and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.

I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood.

I hear that 5 o'clock whistle in my mind like Fred Flintstone and I have to stop. I'm also not much of a morning writer. I have a sweet spot from about 11am to 4pm. But I really work during that time.

I've been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning. Most of it's just whining but every so often there'll be something I can use later: a joke a description a quote. It's an invaluable aid when it comes to winning arguments. 'That's not what you said on February 3 1996 ' I'll say to someone.

As far as I'm concerned the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning.

There was a chance for me to write one song for the section where Elvis sat in his black leather outfit and sang the old hits. At eight oclock the next morning I had written Memories.

Nobody wants to read about the honest lawyer down the street who does real estate loans and wills. If you want to sell books you have to write about the interesting lawyers - the guys who steal all the money and take off. That's the fun stuff.

There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings.

We are used to female writers who use their private lives as unmitigated material being somewhat hormonal this somehow 'excuses' what might be seen as a highly unfeminine ability to turn their personal upsets into money.

I turned down twelve films last year... Huge money films but I had no respect for the writer or the work.

All I wanted to do was write - at the time poems and prose too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way and I didn't need much I was unmarried at the time no children.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough you will be a healthy person. That is if you write what you need to write as opposed to what will make money or what will make fame.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money.

We go to school to learn to work hard for money. I write books and create products that teach people how to have money work hard for them.

I wasn't always a writer. When I went to college and majored in fine arts I was a painter. Then I was a stay-at-home mom.