Quotes and Sayings about Writers
"I'm one of those writers who, when writing, believes she's god-and that she hasn't bestowed free will on any of her characters. In that sense there are no surprises in any of my books."
- Lynn Abbey
(Related: God, Books, Free will, Sense, Surprises, Writers, Writing)
"I understand that postmodern literature probably means people like DeLillo, The Fiction Collective, but I don't get it that those writers are really influenced by postmodern theorists."
- Kathy Acker
(Related: People, Fiction, Literature, Writers)
"How I work is I work from of very character-driven place. And I trust the writers."
- Amy Adams
(Related: Trust, Work, Character, Writers)
"If you desire information on some point of law, you are not likely to ponder over the ponderous tomes of legal writers in order to obtain the knowledge you seek, by your own unaided efforts."
- Felix Adler
(Related: Legal, Knowledge, Desire, Information, Law, Order, Writers)
"I have a huge respect for writers and realise that this is not an area that I find easy. I doubt that I would have the patience in front of a blank sheet of paper to become a writer."
- Jenny Agutter
(Related: Doubt, Patience, Respect, Writer, Writers)
"Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite."
- Edward Albee
(Related: Truth, Fact, Reality, Will, Writer, Writers)
"Intellectuals, academics, writers and poets were an important force in the early groups of volunteers. They had the means to get to Spain and were accustomed to travelling, whereas very few workers had left British shores."
- Bill Alexander
(Related: Force, Intellectuals, Poets, Spain, Workers, Writers)
"If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn."
- Lloyd Alexander
(Related: Books, May, Writers)
"All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts."
- Lloyd Alexander
(Related: Trying, Writers)
"The mercury rule writers also ignored mercury's special qualities."
- Tom Allen
(Related: Mercury, Writers)
"There are many more want-to-be writers out there than good editors."
- Stephen Ambrose
(Related: Editors, Want, Writers)
"We sat around on a hotel balcony with a bottle of wine and tried to figure out how you would go about blowing up a planet. That's the kind of conversations science fiction writers have when they get together. We don't talk about football or anything like that."
- Kevin J. Anderson
(Related: Science, Fiction, Football, Talk, Wine, Writers)
"Writers want to summarize: What does this mean? What did we learn from this? That's a very 19th-century way of thinking about art, because it assumes that it should make our lives better or teach us something."
- Laurie Anderson
(Related: Art, Thinking, Want, Writers)
"Princess Rose should indeed be a TV movie, assuming something doesn't go wrong. I don't know how good a movie it will be, because the way movie folk think is different from the way writers think, and I distrust what isn't done my way. This is what I call a healthy paranoia."
- Piers Anthony
(Related: Distrust, Folk, Paranoia, Will, Writers, Wrong)
"I hope to read a Harry Potter novel soon, to see what it's all about. I admit to being annoyed that many good light fantasy writers have had trouble getting published, in England and elsewhere, when it is obvious the readers were waiting for us all along."
- Piers Anthony
(Related: Hope, Being, EnglFantasy, Light, Obvious, Trouble, Waiting, Writers)
"All the writers and producers around us that gave us the environment where we could play. They were able to provide us with a place where we could take chances to play with things, go against the grain and do things that people don't always do."
- Matthew Ashford
(Related: People, Environment, Play, Writers)
"From my close observation of writers... they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review."
- Isaac Asimov
(Related: Observation, Writers)
"Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not."
- Isaac Asimov
(Related: Science, Catastrophes, Fiction, May, Problems, Writers)
"Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about."
- W. H. Auden
(Related: Originality, Writers)
"I don't know if she should worry too much, I mean some of our greatest writers have had movies made of their books, lots of Hemingway novels were turned into movies, it doesn't hurt the book."
- Paul Auster
(Related: Movies, Books, Hurt, Worry, Writers)
"The challenging thing is that we go home after doing the run-through and the writers stay there working, so sometimes I get script changes delivered to me at midnight. It's constantly shifting."
- Jillian Bach
(Related: Home, Midnight, Writers)
"What makes me furious, not just because we're in an interview, but I don't like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you."
- Erykah Badu
(Related: Words, Writers, Wrong)
"Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders."
- Walter Bagehot
(Related: Writers)
"For me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo."
- Nicholson Baker
(Related: Control, Beginning, Living, World, Writers)
"Live action writers will give you a structure, but who the hell is talking about structure? Animation is closer to jazz than some kind of classical stage structure."
- Ralph Bakshi
(Related: Action, Animation, Hell, Jazz, Talking, Will, Writers)
"And there are people who want to be writers because they love to write. And they care."
- Russell Banks
(Related: Love, People, Care, Want, Writers)
"For almost anyone who chooses to be a writer, since so very few writers are able to learn a living from their work that is equivalent to the living earned by the average dentist or accountant."
- Russell Banks
(Related: Work, Living, Writer, Writers)
"We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets."
- Howard Barker
(Related: Secrets, Theatre, Want, Writers)
"Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales."
- John Perry Barlow
(Related: Performance, Living, Musicians, Sales, Writers)
"The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers."
- Jacques Barzun
(Related: Danger, May, Will, Writers)
"France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic."
- Charles Baudelaire
(Related: Poetry, Fact, France, Horror, Will, Writers)
"It's been a great place to get in touch with what people are really thinking. And to make contact with readers and other writers. Egalitarian, wide open, like the Wild West!"
- Greg Bear
(Related: People, Open, Thinking, Writers)
"No language is rude that can boast polite writers."
- Aubrey Beardsley
(Related: Language, Writers)
"I like a lot of Margaret Atwood, I like much of Alice Munro. Again, if you were to ask me about male writers, there's often a novel I admire, but not all of their works."
- Ann Beattie
(Related: Writers)
"I want to see the writers strike because the writers, god bless them, are the only true commies we have in Hollywood."
- Ned Beatty
(Related: God, Hollywood, Want, Writers)
"Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like."
- Walter Benjamin
(Related: People, Books, Poor, Writers, Writing)
"Why do writers write? Because it isn't there."
- Thomas Berger
(Related: Writers)
"Writers let themselves be enticed by the language."
- Peter Bichsel
(Related: Language, Writers)
"I was very pleased, obviously, to have outsold such great writers. But I'm not insane - I do realize that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation."
- Maeve Binchy
(Related: People, Popular, Vacation, Writer, Writers)
"I got behind that pencil and nothing happened for many years, but since they put me in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, I've turned around. I took a good look at myself and said, I think it's time to get back at work."
- Otis Blackwell
(Related: Time, Work, Fame, Nothing, Years)
"I like this town, it's really great. They've put me in The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. This town is about music. It's about the kind of music I like."
- Otis Blackwell
(Related: Music, Fame)
"Directors and writers have a lot of stress as well, because they have people they answer to."
- Alexis Bledel
(Related: People, Stress, Writers)
"The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify the future."
- Jorge Luis Borges
(Related: Work, Fact, Future, Past, Writers)
"Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned."
- Jorge Luis Borges
(Related: Measure, Writers)
"Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers."
- Alain de Botton
(Related: Writers)
"I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work."
- Alain de Botton
(Related: Work, Attention, Trying, Writers, Writing)
"Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes and always count their change when it is handed to them."
- Catherine Drinker Bowen
(Related: Change, Friends, Mistakes, Self, Trouble, Writers)
"A storyteller is basically what actors and writers are."
- Bruce Boxleitner
(Related: Actors, Writers)
"There are quite a few honest songwriters out there writing about relationships and their own personality traits. But for some reason, once they step out of the bedroom, their honesty doesn't seem to come with them."
- Billy Bragg
(Related: Honesty, Personality, Reason, Relationships, Writing)
"In fact, I think for a lot of writers, it's so hard to be read."
- Susie Bright
(Related: Fact, Writers)
"Finding people who get enormous pleasure from reading books is a more and more unusual experience, and so writers just so much want to be heard."
- Susie Bright
(Related: Experience, People, Books, Pleasure, Reading, Want, Writers)
"I think film had a terrible effect on horror fiction particularly in the 80s, with certain writers turning out stuff as slick and cliched as Hollywood movies."
- Poppy Z. Brite
(Related: Movies, Effect, Fiction, Film, Hollywood, Horror, Writers)
"Great writers are the saints for the godless."
- Anita Brookner
(Related: Saints, Writers)
"A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers."
- Gwendolyn Brooks
(Related: Education, School, Writer, Writers)
"Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers."
- Mel Brooks
(Related: Writers)
"My breakthrough as a reader was when I discovered the European adventure story writers - Alexander Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, to name a few."
- Terry Brooks
(Related: Adventure, Name, Writers)
"Recipe writers hate to write about heat. They despise it. Because there aren't proper words for communicating what should be done with it."
- Alton Brown
(Related: Hate, Words, Writers)
"Why my interest in writers? Well, I'm one, and many of my friends are writers. I know what it's like to write. I'm interested in the creative process. I'm fascinated by the disparity between who we are on the outside, and what we have bubbling away inside us."
- Eric Brown
(Related: Friends, Interest, Writers)
"I think my fascination is less with genre figures than with writers in general."
- Eric Brown
(Related: Writers)
"Don't write the book you think publishers want to commission. Plenty of other writers will be doing the same thing."
- Louise Brown
(Related: Want, Will, Writers)
"Virginia Woolf said that writers must be androgynous. I'll go a step further. You must be bisexual."
- Rita Mae Brown
(Related: Writers)
"Writers will happen in the best of families."
- Rita Mae Brown
(Related: Will, Writers)
"It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave."
- Anatole Broyard
(Related: Love, American, Literature, Nostalgia, Paradoxes, Writers)
"People have no idea what a hard job it is for two writers to be friends. Sooner or later you have to talk about each other's work."
- Anatole Broyard
(Related: Work, People, Idea, Friends, Job, Talk, Writers)
"Although it was in primitive times and differently called the Lord's day or Sunday, yet it was never denominated the Sabbath; a name constantly appropriate to Saturday, or the Seventh day both by sacred and ecclesiastical writers."
- Charles Buck
(Related: Day, Name, Sabbath, Writers)
"Today, there are more opportunities for writers in terms of access to larger success, but it's more difficult to publish a literary novel in the lower ranges. In other words, you almost have to hit a home run. You can hit a triple, maybe, but nobody's interested in a single."
- James Lee Burke
(Related: Home, Success, Literary, Today, Words, Writers)
"I didn't need to borrow money from the record company, because if I had my own publishing company, and I had my own writers, I'd have enough to get and do whatever I wanted to do."
- Solomon Burke
(Related: Money, Company, Publishing, Writers)
"I have learned to respect ideas, wherever they come from. Often they come from clients. Account executives often have big creative ideas, regardless of what some writers think."
- Leo Burnett
(Related: Ideas, Clients, Respect, Writers)
"I think writers tend to be experience junkies, and I think they also tend to want to be on the outside looking in."
- Augusten Burroughs
(Related: Experience, Want, Writers)
"And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - every day, no excuses. It's so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they'd rather clean the toilet than do the writing."
- Octavia Butler
(Related: Day, Excuses, First, Writers, Writing)
"The original Dean Martin Comedy Hour handed me some hysterical sketches. I've got highlights on tons of these variety shows, given to me by their great writers. I'd love to be doing all that again."
- Ruth Buzzi
(Related: Love, Comedy, Martin, Variety, Writers)
"I wanted to be a writer from my early teenage years, but I never told anyone. Writers, in my opinion, were god-like creatures, and to say I was striving to be a writer would be incredibly arrogant."
- Tim Cahill
(Related: God, Opinion, Teenage, Writer, Writers, Years)
"The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well."
- Elias Canetti
(Related: Aphorisms, Writers)
"Everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas."
- Orson Scott Card
(Related: Ideas, First, Writers)
"I realized that everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas."
- Orson Scott Card
(Related: Ideas, First, Writers)
"I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration."
- Orson Scott Card
(Related: Motivation, Admiration, Contempt, Wonder, Writers)
"Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do."
- John Le Carre
(Related: Balance, Childhood, Writer, Writers)
"I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they haven't got one immediately available to them, then they usually manage to manufacture it in their private lives."
- John Le Carre
(Related: Sense, Tension, Writers)
"When I was in college, I was the editor of the literary magazine and insisted neither the editors nor the writers be specifically identified-only our student numbers appeared on the title page. I love that idea and still do."
- Jonathan Carroll
(Related: Love, Idea, College, Editors, Literary, Numbers, Writers)
"I have daughters who are writers and actors but no musicians."
- Rosanne Cash
(Related: Actors, Daughters, Musicians, Writers)
"The humor is essentially dark for a cartoon and sophisticated. But at the same time, being a cartoon gives the writers more freedom than in a normal sitcom. It always pushes the line that, despite human failings, the Simpsons are really decent people."
- Dan Castellaneta
(Related: Humor, Time, People, Being, Freedom, Writers)
"There are times when the writers ask us to improvise. Sometimes the animators are inspired by what you do, and sometimes you are inspired by what the animators do."
- Dan Castellaneta
(Related: Writers)
"I'm very happy to hear that my work inspires writers and painters. It's the most beautiful compliment, the greatest reward. Art should always be an exchange."
- Nick Cave
(Related: Art, Work, Compliment, Reward, Writers)
"The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers."
- Raymond Chandler
(Related: English, May, World, Writers)
"Then on to all the terrific american songwriters, from Tin Pan Alley to the Beatles, from Bob Dylan to Paul Simon. Whoever wrote and sang in the song form I have appreciated."
- Tom Chapin
(Related: American, Song)
"Success breeds volume, and it's just amazing how many young writers, artists, and musicians there are in town."
- Steven Curtis Chapman
(Related: Success, Artists, Musicians, Writers)
"Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work."
- Paddy Chayefsky
(Related: Work, Art, Artists, Talk, Thinking, Writers, Writing)
"Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater latitude for the ego."
- John Cheever
(Related: Ego, Promises, Writers, Writing)
"I never thought of myself as being a good songwriter. There are a ton of other people that are good songwriters, but I don't think I'm in the club. What I do well is perform, sometimes sing pretty good, and accompany myself well and arrange fairly well."
- Alex Chilton
(Related: Thought, People, Being, Pretty)
"I don't think I'm a great singer myself. I'm all right. I've worked with different writers, different producers... I've just been blessed with the caliber of people I've been able to work with."
- Melanie Chisholm
(Related: Work, People, Right, Writers)
"Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Writers)
"I love writers. All of my best friends are writers."
- Patricia Clarkson
(Related: Love, Friends, Writers)
"I just have a thing for writers. Maybe it because I'm just so not a writer."
- Patricia Clarkson
(Related: Writer, Writers)
"Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there."
- Beverly Cleary
(Related: Writers)
"If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers."
- Irvin S. Cobb
(Related: Sense, Writers)
"Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are."
- Jonathan Coe
(Related: Writers)
"The writers who have the deepest influence on one are those one reads in ones more impressionable, early life, and often it is the more youthful works of those writers that leave the deepest imprint."
- J. M. Coetzee
(Related: Life, Influence, Writers)
"In Genesis we saw ourselves as song-writers. After Peter Gabriel left I was the first to say: 'It's OK - we can just do instrumentals.'"
- Phil Collins
(Related: First, Song)
"The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post."
- Cyril Connolly
(Related: Quick, Writers)
"Nowadays they have 12 directors and 15 producers and 30 writers. And all the writers want their lines said a certain way-which isn't necessarily funny. I mean the lines aren't necessarily so funny to begin with."
- Tim Conway
(Related: Funny, Want, Writers)
"Writers mean more than they say and say more than they mean."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Writers)
"I'm one of the lucky writers: plots come easily to me."
- Caroline B. Cooney
"I think it's a question which particularly arises over women writers: whether it's better to have a happy life or a good supply of tragic plots."
- Wendy Cope
(Related: Life, Women, Question)
"Other writers, producers, and directors of low-budget films would often put down the film they were making, saying it was just something to make money with. I never felt that. If I took the assignment, I'd give it my best shot."
- Roger Corman
(Related: Money, Film, Saying, Writers)
"At risk of sounding foully pompous I think that writers' groups are probably very useful at the beginning of a writing career."
- Bernard Cornwell
(Related: Beginning, Career, Risk, Writers, Writing)
"The letters were universally complimentary, and we designers loved hearing that our games were being enjoyed, but if they weren't sending us a picture of their screens most of those writers would have spent their time playing the game rather than writing letters."
- David Crane
(Related: Time, Being, Games, Hearing, Letters, Writers, Writing)
"I spend days with writers' block. It is a problem."
- Mackenzie Crook
(Related: Writers)
"As you know from reading many of these Negro writers, we don't deal too much with the discussion of democracy and what it means and how improvisation fits in all that."
- Stanley Crouch
(Related: Democracy, Reading, Writers)
"Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience - or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence."
- Stanley Crouch
(Related: Experience, Time, People, First, Job, Violence, Writers)
"Most writers like to maintain some sort of anonymity. For me, making videos was an assault."
- Sheryl Crow
(Related: Writers)
"Probably having fallen in love with music and movies at a young age and then first learning about writing by kind of following the path of writers like Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs and being a rock journalist."
- Cameron Crowe
(Related: Age, Love, Movies, Music, Being, First, Learning, Writers, Writing)
"It's always a mistake for writers to key their submissions to world events, because they move so quickly and unpredictably, as has certainly proven the case in Afghanistan."
- Richard Curtis
(Related: Mistake, Afghanistan, Events, Key, World, Writers)
"The Lord taught me to love everybody, but the last ones I learned to love were the sportswriters."
- Alvin Dark
(Related: Love)
"The writers want to know were you made your mistake, no how well your curve is breaking."
- Alvin Dark
(Related: Mistake, Want, Writers)
"People die from typewriters falling on their heads."
- Jonathan Davis
(Related: People)
"I did what most writers do when something happens that's overwhelming, fascinating, moving, all of that. I didn't know what else to do about it except write about it."
- Patti Davis
(Related: Writers)
"When the band begins to get a name for themselves, and the writers get assigned to bands, they'll hit somebody who just doesn't like that kind of music, or they love hip hop but hate guitar rock."
- Kim Deal
(Related: Love, Music, Guitar, Hate, Name, Writers)
"Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories."
- Jeffery Deaver
(Related: Life, Day, Relationships, Writers)
"The best way to learn about writing is to study the work of other writers you admire."
- Jeffery Deaver
(Related: Work, Study, Writers, Writing)
"Writers are frequently asked why they wrote their first book. A more interesting answer might come from asking them why they wrote their second one."
- Len Deighton
(Related: First, Writers)
"American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: American, Writers)
"I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Movies, Jazz, Writers)
"True terror is a language and a vision. There is a deep narrative structure to terrorist acts, and they infiltrate and alter consciousness in ways that writers used to aspire to."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Vision, Consciousness, Deep, Language, Terror, Writers)
"Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That's why so many of them are in jail."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Writers)
"There were five writers on Blazing Saddles."
- Dom DeLuise
(Related: Writers)
"I was a pretty good fighter. But it was the writers who made me great."
- Jack Dempsey
(Related: Pretty, Writers)
"They're pretty particular about what they show. They certainly edit the scripts and have conversations with the writers about what they are and aren't willing to portray. But the writers and the network are pretty much on the same page."
- James Denton
(Related: Network, Pretty, Writers)
"There are some good songs, but not the kind of song-writing that I remember, that I like. Springsteen still does it. Paul Simon, and there are also good writers, but that doesn't dominate the charts."
- Jackie DeShannon
(Related: Song, Songs, Writers)
"The same issue is happening on a show like Everybody Loves Raymond now, which is in its eighth year and struggling to come up with good stories. It'll be interesting to see how they do. The bottom line is, it starts with the writers and ends with the writers."
- William Devane
(Related: Now, Writers)
"Writers are not always right however, but then again, I've been on shows where the actors have complete control and change everything and it's terrible."
- William Devane
(Related: Change, Control, Actors, Right, Writers)
"There's a certain possessiveness of writers sometimes."
- William Devane
(Related: Writers)
"I tell writers to keep reading, reading, reading. Read widely and deeply. And I tell them not to give up even after getting rejection letters. And only write what you love."
- Anita Diament
(Related: Love, Letters, Reading, Rejection, Writers)
"Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness."
- Kate DiCamillo
(Related: Books, Light, Wilderness, Writers)
"Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful."
- Philip K. Dick
(Related: Science, Knowledge, Fiction, Talk, Writers)
"The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers."
- Joan Didion
(Related: Life, Children, Fancy, Order, Writers)
"Writers are always selling somebody out."
- Joan Didion
(Related: Selling, Writers)
"The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century."
- E. L. Doctorow
(Related: Reason, Writer, Writers)
"Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake."
- E. L. Doctorow
(Related: Time, People, Writers)
"Well, there are more writers of blogs right now than there are readers, so that's clearly a vanity phenomenon."
- John Doerr
(Related: Now, Right, Vanity, Writers)
"The first writers are first and the rest, in the long run, nowhere but in anthologies."
- Carl Van Doren
(Related: First, Rest, Writers)
"I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers."
- Rita Dove
(Related: People, Writers)
"Young writers should definitely research the current sounds and styles."
- Lamont Dozier
(Related: Research, Writers)
"I have no agenda except to be funny. Neither I or the writers profess to offer any worldly wisdom."
- Julia Louis Dreyfus
(Related: Wisdom, Funny, Writers)
"I have learned so much from working with other poets, travelling and reading with them, spending days discussing poems in progress. There is the sense that we are all, as writers, part of something which is more powerful than any of us."
- Helen Dunmore
(Related: Progress, Poems, Poets, Reading, Sense, Writers)
"The writers are writing human beings, and they're writing about the human condition and how difficult it is to function in that condition. I think it's one of the charms of the show, the idea of redemption and working towards becoming better people, for everybody involved."
- George Dzundza
(Related: People, Idea, Writers, Writing)
"I think the criticism that I take to heart is from other writers that I respect."
- Steve Earle
(Related: Heart, Criticism, Respect, Writers)
"If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum."
- Arthur Eddington
(Related: Army, Books)
"I think new writers everywhere need opportunities to get published."
- Greg Egan
(Related: Writers)
"Australian SF book publishing has undergone a boom recently, and sometimes it's easier for new writers to sell a book to a local publisher first, which then makes a US edition more likely."
- Greg Egan
(Related: First, Publishing, Writers)
"Pop science goes flying off in all kinds of fashionable directions, and it often drags a lot of SF writers with it. I've been led astray like that myself at times."
- Greg Egan
(Related: Science, Flying, Writers)
"In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment."
- Pliny the Elder
(Related: Word, Writers)
"Most writers can write, most rock 'n rollers cannot."
- Andrew Eldritch
(Related: Writers)
"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
- T. S. Eliot
(Related: Editors, Writers)
"From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing."
- Joe Eszterhas
(Related: Power, Soul, Heart, Now, Writing)
"There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves."
- Cliff Fadiman
(Related: Writers)
"The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews."
- William Faulkner
(Related: Time, Artist, Want, Writers)
"Writers should be read but not seen. Rarely are they a winsome sight."
- Edna Ferber
(Related: Sight, Writers)
"If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs."
- Tina Fey
(Related: Comedy, Dress, Lady, Man, Old, Stairs, Want, Writers)
"Writers always know whether you like them or not."
- Leslie Fiedler
(Related: Writers)
"There aren't more lady songwriters for the same reason that there aren't more lady doctors or lady accountants or lady lawyers; not enough women have the time for careers."
- Dorothy Fields
(Related: Time, Women, Careers, Doctors, Lady, Lawyers, Reason)
"I love new writing, new blood, modern works by unknown writers."
- Joseph Fiennes
(Related: Love, Blood, Writers, Writing)
"It's a marvellous life, a gregarious life that we've had. We're very lucky in that way. Unlike writers or painters, we don't sit down in front of a blank canvas and say, 'How do I start? Where do I start?'"
- Albert Finney
(Related: Life, Writers)
"An awful lot of thriller writers write women rather badly. So just doing it OK gets a lot of credit."
- Ken Follett
(Related: Women, Credit, Writers)
"World War II is the greatest drama in human history, the biggest war ever and a true battle of good and evil. I imagine writers will continue to get stories from it, and readers will continue to love them, for many more years."
- Ken Follett
(Related: Love, War, History, Battle, Drama, Evil, Will, World, World war, Writers, Years)
"Movies have influenced all writers, not just thriller writers."
- Ken Follett
(Related: Movies, Writers)
"I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers, their trying their hand at poetry."
- Shelby Foote
(Related: Poetry, Trying, Writers, Writing)
"They're hit writers. They're gonna write me a hit whether I wanted it or not you know? I could have put out a single a year ago with the Neptunes and maybe been writing now on top but that was not the path that I chose."
- Willa Ford
(Related: Now, Writers, Writing)
"Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent."
- E. M. Forster
(Related: Causes, Writers)
"The overwhelming triumph of the international multimedia conglomerate has resulted in less diversity within the field and has made it much harder for newer writers not only to break in, but to make any kind of a living while doing so."
- Alan Dean Foster
(Related: Diversity, Living, Writers)
"I think Star Trek has been very double-edged for all of us - as actors, writers, directors."
- Jonathan Frakes
(Related: Actors, Writers)
"I like contemporary American literature and I like biographies and I like jazz and I like baseball and I like writers who write about the human condition and sci-fi is just something that I happened into."
- Jonathan Frakes
(Related: American, Baseball, Jazz, Literature, Writers)
"The first thing is that we're being attacked by both the Writers Guild and the Producers Guild. Both of these groups are trying to diminish the importance and strength of the director. They're trying to do it through both frontal and side attacks."
- John Frankenheimer
(Related: Strength, Being, First, Importance, Trying, Writers)
"I feel as if I'm clearly part of a trend among writers who take themselves seriously - and I confess to taking myself as seriously as the next writer."
- Jonathan Franzen
(Related: Writer, Writers)
"That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing."
- Antonia Fraser
(Related: Prison, Writers, Writing)
"The reason actors, artists, writers have agents is because we'll do it for nothing. That's a basic fact - you gotta do it."
- Morgan Freeman
(Related: Actors, Artists, Fact, Nothing, Reason, Writers)
"Papa continually emphasizes how much remains unexplained. With the other psychoanalytic writers, everything is always so known and fixed."
- Anna Freud
(Related: Writers)
"I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense."
- Robert Frost
(Related: Music, English, May, Sense, Sound, Writers)
"Sinatra was pretty astute - he used the best songwriters around, he used all the resources, he covered every song from the era basically."
- Martin Fry
(Related: Pretty, Song)
"How some of the writers I come across get through their books without dying of boredom is beyond me."
- William Gaddis
(Related: Books, Boredom, Dying, Writers)
"I'm one of those writers who tends to be really good at making outlines and sticking to them. I'm very good at doing that, but I don't like it. It sort of takes a lot of the fun out."
- Neil Gaiman
(Related: Fun, Writers)
"Rock and roll stars have it much better than writers when they're on a tour."
- Neil Gaiman
(Related: Stars, Writers)
"You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it."
- Neil Gaiman
(Related: Time, People, Ideas, Being, Difference, Writers)
"All writers are vampires."
- James Gandolfini
(Related: Writers)
"You know, all writers are vampires and they'll look around and they watch you when you're not even thinking they're watching you and they'll slip stuff in."
- James Gandolfini
(Related: Thinking, Writers)
"I think writers are very anxious."
- Helen Garner
(Related: Writers)
"Writers seem to me to be people who need to retire from social life and do a lot of thinking about what's happened - almost to calm themselves."
- Helen Garner
(Related: Life, People, Thinking, Writers)
"Writing is no dying art form in America because most published writers here accept the wisdom and the necessity of encouraging the talent that follows in their footsteps."
- Elizabeth George
(Related: Art, Wisdom, Talent, Encouraging, America, Dying, Footsteps, Necessity, Writers, Writing)
"Some writers and producers are currently writing a sitcom for me, so we'll see what happens there. I'm somewhat reluctant to talk about some of the upcoming projects that I'm working on; I've a lot of stuff on the go, including five pictures that I'm looking at producing."
- Gil Gerard
(Related: Projects, Talk, Writers, Writing)
"I'm really happy that I got to work with such fresh talent. In a day when record companies are not particularly good at encouraging young, talented songwriters to come forward and get exposure, I think it's important to give tomorrow's songwriters the opportunity."
- Robin Gibb
(Related: Work, Talent, Opportunity, Encouraging, Day, Tomorrow)
"Our writers are full of cliches just as old barns are full of bats. There is obviously no rule about this, except that anything that you suspect of being a cliche undoubtedly is one and had better be removed."
- Wolcott Gibbs
(Related: Being, Cliches, Old, Writers)
"Dreaming in public is an important part of our job description, as science writers, but there are bad dreams as well as good dreams. We're dreamers, you see, but we're also realists, of a sort."
- William Gibson
(Related: Dreams, Science, Job, Public, Writers)
"Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions."
- William E. Gladstone
(Related: Successful, Mediocrity, Now, Prose, Writers)
"In 1967, the students at San Francisco State invited the poet Amiri Baraka to the campus for a semester. He attracted other influential black writers such as Sonia Sanchez, Ed Bullins, Eldridge Cleaver. What emerged was something we called the community communications program. That's how I got involved; I got involved in a little play."
- Danny Glover
(Related: Community, Play, State, Students, Writers)
"I really believe in myself. I'm the hardest worker I know, and one of the best songwriters. There's a craft to it, and it takes a long time to hone it, and I work really hard at it."
- Arthur Godfrey
(Related: Time, Work)
"But I was, and still am, an avid reader and so when I first started I chose to photograph many of the great writers in this country to try and earn a living."
- Fay Godwin
(Related: Country, First, Living, Writers)
"Literature boils with the madcap careers of writers brought to the edge by the demands of living on their nerves, wringing out their memories and their nightmares to extract meaning, truth, beauty."
- Herbert Gold
(Related: Beauty, Truth, Careers, Literature, Living, Meaning, Memories, Nerves, Writers)
"As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease."
- Oliver Goldsmith
(Related: Knowledge, Desire, Writers)
"Here I am paying big money to you writers and what for? All you do is change the words."
- Samuel Goldwyn
(Related: Change, Money, Words, Writers)
"A lot of the great songwriters in history have been collaborators, with a separate lyricist."
- Mike Gordon
(Related: History)
"When they do bring on new people, it's good for the show. It's like getting a new toy. The writers enjoy it because it's a whole new character that they can write for, one that they aren't used to writing for. They can try different things."
- Mark-Paul Gosselaar
(Related: People, Character, Writers, Writing)
"Our great American writers were all newspaper people."
- John Gould
(Related: People, American, Writers)
"It's well known that actors are lousy writers."
- Richard Grant
(Related: Actors, Writers)
"It's unfortunate we've never been just songwriters."
- Adolph Green
"Dorsey played the upright bass and steel guitar, as well as acoustic guitar. Johnny played acoustic guitar and together they were fabulous songwriters and singers."
- Jimmy Griffin
(Related: Guitar)
"A lot of our writers, like Conan O'Brien, moved on to other things."
- Matt Groening
(Related: Writers)
"Since I was there in the very beginning, I know the history of the characters. So, I make comments about the tone and sometimes remind the writers that we've done that before."
- Matt Groening
(Related: History, Beginning, Writers)
"We've got a bunch of new writers now who tell me they grew up watching The Simpsons. It's bizarre, and they're writing some very funny stuff."
- Matt Groening
(Related: Funny, Bizarre, Now, Writers, Writing)
"The writers led by Mike Scully are fantastic. And they're creating original stories that not only don't repeat what we've already done, they also don't repeat anything I've seen on television."
- Matt Groening
(Related: Television, Writers)
"I was aware that there is an expectation that writers inevitably falter at this stage, that they fail to live up to the promise of their first successful book, that the next book never pleases the way the prior one did. It simply increased my sense of being challenged."
- David Guterson
(Related: Successful, Being, Expectation, First, Promise, Sense, Writers)
"Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me."
- David Guterson
(Related: Money, Time, Thought, Habit, Being, Books, English, Thinking, Writers, Writing)
"I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem."
- Marilyn Hacker
(Related: Poetry, Hope, Healing, Potential, Will, Writers)
"I think most writers feel like they're on the outside looking in much of the time. All of us feel, to a certain extent, alienated from the stuff going on around us."
- Mark Haddon
(Related: Time, Writers)
"Many children's writers don't have children of their own."
- Mark Haddon
(Related: Children, Writers)
"There's something with the physical size of America... American writers can write about America and it can still feel like a foreign country."
- Mark Haddon
(Related: America, American, Country, Writers)
"I'm more influenced by my own interests than anyone else's. Writers have to entertain themselves, or they can't entertain anyone else."
- Laurell K. Hamilton
(Related: Writers)
"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."
- Laurell K. Hamilton
(Related: People, Fun, Talking, Want, Writers, Writing)
"It would not be fair to the critics of Rotary, who include some of the most brilliant of the British and American writers, to charge them with prejudice."
- Paul Harris
(Related: American, Prejudice, Writers)
"Most comic scriptwriters are very bad. The artists are good, but the writers are so bad."
- Harry Harrison
(Related: Artists, Writers)
"Writers can write outside their ethnicity or sex depending how open and vulnerable they wish to be."
- Jim Harrison
(Related: Sex, Open, Writers)
"The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps."
- Jim Harrison
(Related: Life, Advice, Wine, Writers)
"Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works."
- Jim Harrison
(Related: Publishing, Writers)
"There's a statistical theory that if you gave a million monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they'd eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the Internet, we now know this isn't true."
- Ian Hart
(Related: Work, Internet, Now, Shakespeare, Theory)
"Painters of paintings, writers of books, never could tell the half."
- Lorenz Hart
(Related: Books, Writers)
"Sometimes writers say true things about the overall nature of publicity, promotion, and the publishing industry; but alas, not always."
- Teresa Nielsen Hayden
(Related: Nature, Promotion, Publicity, Publishing, Writers)
"Writers say many true things about their own experiences with publicity and promotion."
- Teresa Nielsen Hayden
(Related: Promotion, Publicity, Writers)
"But when I did think about it and looked at the whole package - the producers behind the show, the writers, the cast I would be working with - I would have been a fool to turn it down just because the role for me was another gay role."
- Sean Hayes
(Related: Fool, Gay, Writers)
"The writers have slowly taken the show, with subjects other gay shows have dived right into, slowly. It was over a year before Will even started to date."
- Sean Hayes
(Related: Gay, Right, Will, Writers)
"I think for writers who write that kind of stuff, they want to make changes. Look at Kris Kristofferson and Dylan. I mean, whole generations come along liking that stuff and that's great."
- Lee Hazlewood
(Related: Generations, Want, Writers)
"As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note."
- Seamus Heaney
(Related: Positive, Realism, Sense, Writers)
"There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. The only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick."
- Robert A. Heinlein
(Related: Food, Science, Isolation, Solution, Writers)
"They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves."
- Lillian Hellman
(Related: Advice, Fancy, Talking, Writers, Writing)
"If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves."
- Lillian Hellman
(Related: Advice, Talking, Writers, Writing)
"Sometimes songwriters and singers forget that. They get a melody in their head and the notes will take precedence, so that they wind up forcing a word onto a melody. It doesn't ring true."
- Don Henley
(Related: Forget, Will, Wind, Word)
"What I always meant by that was that I do believe that a lot of directors, and writers, and sometimes producers just lose their edge because they haven't seen anybody or talked to anybody or been with anybody who isn't a kind of replica of themselves for a long period of time."
- Buck Henry
(Related: Time, Writers)
"Many artists and writers have used cannabis for creative stimulation - from the writers of the world's religious masterpieces to our most irreverent satirists."
- Jack Herer
(Related: Artists, Religious, World, Writers)
"The main advantage of the omniscient approach is that it's the easiest to handle. That's the major reason so many writers select it."
- Arthur Herzog
(Related: Reason, Writers)
"I have Graham Greene's telephone number, but I wouldn't dream of using it. I don't seek out writers because we all want to be alone."
- Patricia Highsmith
(Related: Dream, Want, Writers)
"Nashville is one of the greatest places for the best songwriters in the world. It's been fantastic to live there and to raise our family there. It's a great town."
- Faith Hill
(Related: Family, World)
"My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms."
- Howard Hodgkin
(Related: Friends, Writers)
"I feel more influenced in my own work by dreams than I do by other writers' works in a way. Or by popular culture, movies - what else is there to write about than love and loss?"
- Alice Hoffman
(Related: Dreams, Love, Movies, Work, Culture, Loss, Popular, Writers)
"I went on a long trip through South America with Prince Charles where I was the only journalist there - a couple of photographers but no other writers."
- Anthony Holden
(Related: America, Writers)
"It seems to me that many writers, by virtue of environments of culture, art and education, slip into writing because of their environments."
- Robert E. Howard
(Related: Art, Education, Virtue, Culture, Writers, Writing)
"I had neither expert aid nor advice. I studied no courses in writing; until a year or so ago, I never read a book by anybody advising writers how to write."
- Robert E. Howard
(Related: Advice, Writers, Writing)
"We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line."
- Langston Hughes
(Related: Being, Censorship, Writers)
"I think writers, by nature, are more observers instead of participators."
- Ian Hunter
(Related: Nature, Writers)
"I was notified on July 17 to be ready to start August 7 for an October air date. When we reached the screen we did not have a single segment ready. It was done so fast the writers never got a chance to know what it was all about."
- Jeffrey Hunter
(Related: Chance, July, October, Writers)
"Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves."
- Aldous Huxley
(Related: Influence, Writers)
"The so-called feminist writers were disgusted with me. I did my thing, and so I guess by feminist standards I'm a feminist. That suits me fine."
- Chrissie Hynde
(Related: Writers)
"Some scientists use TeX or LatEX but for most people Word is the thing that writers use these days."
- Miguel de Icaza
(Related: People, Scientists, Word, Writers)
"I think the special thing about Python is that it's a writers' commune. The writers are in charge. The writers decide what the material is."
- Eric Idle
(Related: Writers)
"I know that many writers have had to write under censorship and yet produced good novels; for instance, Cervantes wrote Don Quixote under Catholic censorship."
- Guillermo Cabrera Infante
(Related: Censorship, Writers)
"I believe that writers, unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite, are at heart people who live by night, a little bit outside society, moving between delinquency and conformity."
- Guillermo Cabrera Infante
(Related: Society, People, Heart, Conformity, Night, Writers)
"Writers rush in where publishers fear to tread and where translators fear to tread."
- Guillermo Cabrera Infante
(Related: Fear, Writers)
"I think writers rush in where everybody is very frightened to tread."
- Guillermo Cabrera Infante
(Related: Writers)
"I think that like all writers - and if any writer disagrees with this, then he is not a writer - I write primarily for myself."
- Guillermo Cabrera Infante
(Related: Writer, Writers)
"In many ways, Viv and I were the only ones who were really songwriters."
- Neil Innes
"What is difficult is the promotion, balancing the public side of a writer's life with the writing. I think that's something a lot of writers are having to face. Writers have become much more public now."
- Kazuo Ishiguro
(Related: Life, Now, Promotion, Public, Writer, Writers, Writing)
"As is said about most writers: on the one hand all I ever did from when I was a child was read, and I was a loner, which was furthered by my parents and my upbringing."
- Elfriede Jelinek
(Related: Parents)
"My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own."
- Tahar Ben Jelloun
(Related: Sensibility, Writers)
"We do not have many intellectuals who can speak out for us internationally. We have no writers who are recognized, respected and loved outside the Arab world."
- Tahar Ben Jelloun
(Related: Intellectuals, World, Writers)
"I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents."
- Tahar Ben Jelloun
(Related: Language, Parents, Writers)
"Writers write. Dreamers talk about it."
- Jerry B. Jenkins
(Related: Talk, Writers)
"Artist - musicians, painters, writers, poets, always seem to have had the most accurate perception of what is really going on around them, not the official version or the popular perception of contemporary life."
- Billy Joel
(Related: Life, Perception, Artist, Musicians, Poets, Popular, Writers)
"No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks."
- Erica Jong
(Related: Wisdom, Being, Fool, Fools, Public, Race, Rest, Writers)
"I do enjoy working with writers."
- Neil Jordan
(Related: Writers)
"And of course there's so much music in and around our family. I had a piano during Christmas because it's obviously useful through the season. There are so many people, songwriters, who are around."
- Ashley Judd
(Related: Music, Family, People, Christmas)
"It was really written as most, I think, books are by writers - for themselves. There was something that just had to be written, in a way that it had to be written. If you know what I mean."
- Norton Juster
(Related: Books, Writers)
"Writers speak stench."
- Franz Kafka
(Related: Writers)
"It hurt me a great deal. It put a lot of pressure on me because I was at a young age and the writers around here and throughout the league starting comparing me to Cobb. It put a lot of pressure on me."
- Al Kaline
(Related: Age, Hurt, Pressure, Writers)
"Writing can be a very solitary business. It's you sat at a desk typing words into a computer. It can get lonely sometimes and lots of writers live quite isolated lives."
- Paul Kane
(Related: Business, Computer, Lonely, Words, Writers, Writing)
"Some writers would be kinder than others, I'm sure. Hopefully they might describe my techniques as a mixture of tried and tested formulas - if it aint broke don't fix it - and unexpected twists."
- Paul Kane
(Related: Writers)
"As for goals, I don't set myself those anymore. I'm not one of these 'I must have achieved this and that by next year' kind of writers. I take things as they come and find that patience and persistence tend to win out in the end."
- Paul Kane
(Related: Goals, End, Patience, Persistence, Writers)
"I believe that, like most writers, my personality comes through in the fiction. So in that respect my writing can't be like any other author's really."
- Paul Kane
(Related: Fiction, Personality, Respect, Writers, Writing)
"I read, therefore I'm interested in writers."
- Philip Kaufman
(Related: Writers)
"That has to remain the principal reason for doing it, doesn't it? I know it's possible to write for money, and many very good writers have done so. But for me, it has to remain the principal thing that I actually want to do the writing."
- Jonathan Kellerman
(Related: Money, Reason, Want, Writers, Writing)
"I must apologise because I know all writers have memories of being on the outer because it's the children on the side of the playground who become the dangerous writers."
- Thomas Keneally
(Related: Being, Children, Memories, Writers)
"Nothing spooky or terrible happened on set, but we were told to say it had. We were giving a press conference and the writers were going on about these terrible things that supposedly happened while we were filming."
- Margot Kidder
(Related: Giving, Nothing, Press, Writers)
"The writers I respect the most had an undying commitment to a vision."
- Jewel Kilcher
(Related: Vision, Commitment, Respect, Writers)
"I think there are some songwriters who are just brilliant who can write and then I think there are some songwriters who can like me I have a problem writing chorus lyrics but I can write a song in a story like that."
- Charles King
(Related: Song, Writing)
"Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in."
- Florence King
(Related: Metaphors, Nothing, Writers)
"Good writers are in the business of leaving signposts saying, Tour my world, see and feel it through my eyes; I am your guide."
- Larry King
(Related: Business, Eyes, Saying, World, Writers)
"All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour."
- Ben Kingsley
(Related: Writers)
"Anyone who claims to be good at lying is obviously bad at lying. Thus - as a writer myself - I cannot comment on whether or not writers are exceptionally good liars, because whatever I said would actually mean its complete opposite."
- Chuck Klosterman
(Related: Lying, Writer, Writers)
"At a magazine, everything you do is edited by a bunch of people, by committee, and a lot of them are, were, or think of themselves as writers. Part of that is because magazines worry about their voice."
- Chuck Klosterman
(Related: People, Committee, Voice, Worry, Writers)
"I know many writers who first dictate passages, then polish what they have dictated. I speak, then I polish - occasionally I do windows."
- Edward Koch
(Related: First, Windows, Writers)
"If something in your writing gives support to people in their lives, that's more than just entertainment-which is what we writers all struggle to do, to touch people."
- Dean Koontz
(Related: People, Entertainment, Struggle, Support, Writers, Writing)
"I think one of the coolest things about the job is the level of trust we have for each other. The actors fully trust that the writers will write amazing episodes, and the writers trust that the actors will follow their instincts with the characters."
- John Krasinski
(Related: Trust, Actors, Job, Will, Writers)
"Home base is the support system where we have a culinary team, my own writers because of the shows and the books and stuff, we have a culinary team of about six people. Marketing, public relations, accounting and all that sort of stuff."
- Emeril Lagasse
(Related: Home, People, Books, Marketing, Public, Support, Writers)
"New fiction writers are a special breed in my estimation, and I never dreamed that so many people would be interested, but I remember being led by God."
- Tim LaHaye
(Related: God, People, Being, Fiction, Writers)
"However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously."
- Wally Lamb
(Related: Fiction, May, Pretty, Writers, Writing)
"A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor."
- Ring Lardner
(Related: Mistake, Self, Temptation, Writers)
"The prophets and the writers of the Psalms were clear that God was continuing to work in the universe and in all history. They declared that He had created the universe."
- Kenneth Scott Latourette
(Related: Work, History, God, Universe, Writers)
"There are numerous cases of that, where one of our writers discovers another writer whom he likes, and we then take that book on. So it's a very close relationship. We can do that because we're so small."
- James Laughlin
(Related: Writer, Writers)
"To me the only real star of the movie is the writer. And I work with writers very closely, from outline to first draft and on to the seventh draft, whatever it takes. Then my job is to support the director to make the best movie we can. Some producers try to go past them, but my job is to support them."
- Dino De Laurentiis
(Related: Work, Draft, First, Job, Past, Support, Writer, Writers)
"But it also became the experience, or was the experience, of the writers who were attracted to this kind of humor. They're all men or women who come from the same kind of experience in their own lives."
- Norman Lear
(Related: Experience, Men, Women, Humor, Writers)
"Granted, the writers, directors, producers, and that community make a great deal of money. But they might be choosing to do a whole lot of other things for the living they make."
- Norman Lear
(Related: Money, Community, Living, Writers)
"Writers tell stories better, because they've had more practice, but everyone has a book in them. Yes, that old cliche."
- Tanith Lee
(Related: Old, Practice, Writers)
"I love writers all across the board, but one who influenced me very directly at the beginning was Mary Renault."
- Tanith Lee
(Related: Love, Beginning, Writers)
"I think writers are prone to hyperbole sometimes."
- John Legend
(Related: Writers)
"I've had the odd good luck of starting slowly and building gradually, something few writers are allowed anymore. As a result I've seen each of my books called the breakthrough. And each was, in its way."
- Jonathan Lethem
(Related: Books, Building, Luck, Result, Writers)
"I grew up with an artist father, and my parents' friends were also mainly artists or writers, so he connects what I do with his example."
- Jonathan Lethem
(Related: Father, Artist, Artists, Example, Friends, Parents, Writers)
"Good writers are of necessity rare."
- George Henry Lewes
(Related: Necessity, Writers)
"Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile."
- Sinclair Lewis
(Related: Writers)
"We are the only school in America, drama school in America that trains actors, writers and directors side by side for three years in a master's degree program, and we want them - to expose them to everything."
- James Lipton
(Related: Actors, America, Drama, School, Want, Writers, Years)
"Since then, I have just read and read - but, that said, I suppose there is a raft of writers to whom I return again and again, not so much because I want to write like them, even if I were capable of it, but simply for a sort of stylistic shot in the arm."
- Penelope Lively
(Related: Want, Writers)
"I'm interested in how artists and writers do this, using art as therapy. Escaping into the worlds we create. We're all victims and few of us are truly free."
- David Lloyd
(Related: Art, Artists, Therapy, Victims, Writers)
"You need the words, you need the script, you need the material, you need the commitment, you need the passion, it's like we depend on writers, we depend on producers, directors depend on us and once things are in the divine order as they happen."
- Nia Long
(Related: Commitment, Order, Passion, Words, Writers)
"Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism."
- Audre Lorde
(Related: Quality, Literary, Racism, Writers)
"I enjoyed hearing people do their own songs. I became attracted to singer-songwriters. I became interested in them as people; was curious about what they wanted to say."
- Lyle Lovett
(Related: People, Hearing, Songs)
"You could name the great stars of the silent screen who were finished; the great directors gone; the great title writers who were washed up. But remember this, as long as you live: the producers didn't lose a man. They all made the switch. That's where the great talent is."
- Ernst Lubitsch
(Related: Talent, Man, Name, Stars, Writers)
"Apart from a few simple principles, the sound and rhythm of English prose seem to me matters where both writers and readers should trust not so much to rules as to their ears."
- F. L. Lucas
(Related: Trust, English, Principles, Prose, Rules, Sound, Writers)
"Writers are in the entertainment business, and it gives me lots of pleasure to entertain my readers."
- Brian Lumley
(Related: Business, Entertainment, Pleasure, Writers)
"And I have to consider myself fortunate, because there are plenty of writers who spend most of a lifetime looking for that certain something without ever finding it."
- Brian Lumley
(Related: Writers)
"One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this."
- Yo-Yo Ma
(Related: People, Film, Project, Writers)
"The first year we actually did a lot of night shooting and the writers weren't even allowed on location."
- James MacArthur
(Related: First, Night, Writers)
"Our principal writers have nearly all been fortunate in escaping regular education."
- Hugh MacDiarmid
(Related: Education, Writers)
"My theory is that I decided to be a writer when I was about seven, but of course it is not as simple as that. Like most writers, I had to work at other things to earn a living and wrote mainly in the evenings, often very late at night, for many years."
- Margaret Mahy
(Related: Work, Living, Night, Theory, Writer, Writers, Years)
"At the same time, I think books create a sort of network in the reader's mind, with one book reinforcing another. Some books form relationships. Other books stand in opposition. No two writers or readers have the same pattern of interaction."
- Margaret Mahy
(Related: Time, Books, Mind, Network, Opposition, Relationships, Writers)
"I was able to work out all sorts of attitudes to style and event and character, all of which affected the way I came to think about my own writing. I believe that all good writers are original."
- Margaret Mahy
(Related: Work, Character, Style, Writers, Writing)
"At this stage I am not involved with young adults as closely as many other writers. My children are grown up and my grandchildren are still quite young."
- Margaret Mahy
(Related: Children, Writers)
"We were a very small circle of writers. Everybody brought to the table their own life experience."
- Howie Mandel
(Related: Experience, Life, Writers)
"I think that most writers who wait until they're inspired to write are just waiting for the fear to subside."
- Barry Mann
(Related: Fear, Waiting, Writers)
"One other thing, if it's possible, as songwriters, you should also develop yourself as record producers."
- Barry Mann
"Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability."
- Barry Mann
(Related: Successful, Ability)
"There's so much fear involved in trying to do something you don't know how to do that drugs and alcohol can become a big part of your life if you have an addictive personality or are very unsure, which most songwriters are."
- Barry Mann
(Related: Life, Fear, Alcohol, Drugs, Personality, Trying)
"Of course the word chaos is used in rather a vague sense by a lot of writers, but in physics it means a particular phenomenon, namely that in a nonlinear system the outcome is often indefinitely, arbitrarily sensitive to tiny changes in the initial condition."
- Murray Gell Mann
(Related: Chaos, Physics, Sense, Word, Writers)
"The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties."
- W. Somerset Maugham
(Related: Trouble, Writers)
"Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard."
- Daphne du Maurier
(Related: Writers)
"Women writers have been told, forever, that our stories were not valuable. Not as valuable as men's stories about wars, business, power."
- Joyce Maynard
(Related: Power, Women, Business, Writers)
"I think writers need windows on a view to remind them that a whole world is out there, not the minutiae with which they might be dealing on a close scale."
- Anne McCaffrey
(Related: Windows, World, Writers)
"I wouldn't encourage new writers to start off publishing through electronic media... it still isn't wide enough for the readership they would need to get a good start."
- Anne McCaffrey
(Related: Media, Publishing, Writers)
"Some of the greatest writers in our industry can't get work."
- Kent McCord
(Related: Work, Writers)
"So, we come out to Los Angeles. And we met with every network. We met with show runners, directors, writers, everything. And what we had an idea for, they didn't like. And what they had an idea for, we didn't like. So, we went home."
- Reba McEntire
(Related: Home, Idea, Network, Writers)
"Yes, you can feel very alone as a poet and you sometimes think, is it worth it? Is it worth carrying on? But because there were other poets, you became part of a scene. Even though they were very different writers, it made it easier because you were together."
- Roger McGough
(Related: Poets, Worth, Writers)
"I know great songwriters. Fred Neil would come up when he was in L.A., we all used to hang out. He would sit there and sing, and we would just melt. I mean, we would go to his recording sessions."
- Barry McGuire
"I do not write by any set time schedule. I realize there are many writers who follow a daily regime where they arise at 6:00 a.m., do some sort of exercise, eat breakfast and then sit down and produce words for a three to four hour period."
- Donald McKay
(Related: Time, Exercise, Words, Writers)
"Few writers are willing to admit writing is autobiographical."
- Terry McMillan
(Related: Writers, Writing)
"My first thought when I came here was that I understood why there are so many great Irish writers - because there is something mystical in the air. There's always this cloudy, moody sky and it's challenging."
- Christopher Meloni
(Related: Thought, First, Irish, Sky, Writers)
"How that works is our first season was the year we had a threatened writers' strike, so what we did was that instead of doing 22 episodes, we did 30. We put 10 in the bank."
- Christopher Meloni
(Related: First, Writers)
"I wanted the press to become something of a movement. Not a movement committed to a particular "ism," but a gathering together of writers with an aesthetic approach to literature and with a lust for excellence."
- John Metcalf
(Related: Excellence, Literature, Lust, Press, Writers)
"Writers don't have to keep themselves honest. They have to keep themselves accurate."
- John Metcalf
(Related: Writers)
"The really great writers are people like Emily Bronte who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination."
- James A. Michener
(Related: Experience, Imagination, People, Writers)
"Russia, France, Germany and China. They revere their writers. America is still a frontier country that almost shudders at the idea of creative expression."
- James A. Michener
(Related: Idea, America, Country, Expression, France, Germany, Russia, Writers)
"I have come to understand and appreciate writers much more recently since I started working on a book last fall. Before that, I thought golf writers got up every morning, played a round of golf, had lunch, showed up for our last three holes and then went to dinner."
- Phil Mickelson
(Related: Thought, Golf, Writers)
"Writers of novels and romance in general bring a double loss to their readers; robbing them of their time and money; representing men, manners, and things, that never have been, or are likely to be."
- Mary Wortley Montagu
(Related: Time, Men, Romance, Money, Loss, Manners, Writers)
"When a person responds emotionally to intellectual things, or emotionally only to traditional emotional things - I find that an interesting break between myself and some other writers and fans."
- Elizabeth Moon
(Related: Fans, Writers)
"Actors are good liars; writers are good liars with good memories."
- Daniel Keys Moran
(Related: Actors, Memories, Writers)
"Writers, all the good ones, are Natural Born Liars."
- Daniel Keys Moran
(Related: Writers)
"Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand."
- Alberto Moravia
(Related: Composers, Trying, Writers)
"Together with script writers Syd green and Dick Hills, we worked on the comedy ideas for this series."
- Eric Morecambe
(Related: Ideas, Comedy, Writers)
"Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques."
- Robert Morgan
(Related: Poetry, Values, Famous, Sense, Writers)
"The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse."
- Robert Morgan
(Related: Poetry, Decision, Prose, Reading, Writers)
"Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there."
- Robert Morgan
(Related: First, Writers)
"Young writers only take off when they find their subjects. Since almost everyone has a family and stories about family, that is often a place to start."
- Robert Morgan
(Related: Family, Writers)
"I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry."
- Robert Morgan
(Related: Poetry, Writers)
"Too many of these writers in the music papers, they are misunderstanding everything. The disco sound is not art or anything so serious."
- Giorgio Moroder
(Related: Art, Music, Sound, Writers)
"Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers."
- Toni Morrison
(Related: American, Being, Writers)
"The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power."
- Toni Morrison
(Related: Power, Ability, Self, Writers)
"I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print."
- John Mortimer
(Related: Fear, Censorship, Laws, Magic, Writers)
"At one time if you were a black writer you had to be one of the best writers in the world to be published. You had to be great. Now you can be good. Mediocre. And that's good."
- Walter Mosley
(Related: Time, Now, World, Writer, Writers)
"On the other hand, at some level the mass of unresolved issues in Northern Ireland does influence the fact that there are so many good writers in the place."
- Paul Muldoon
(Related: Fact, Influence, Ireland, Writers)
"When Ted Williams was here, inducted into the Hall of Fame 37 years ago, he said he must have earned it, because he didn't win it because of his friendship with the writers. I guess in that way, I'm proud to be in this company that way."
- Eddie Murray
(Related: Friendship, Company, Fame, Writers, Years)
"It's a bit of a crapshoot out there with young writers right now anyway."
- George Murray
(Related: Now, Right, Writers)
"And thus it was that I started to wonder why Robert Burns is so important to us. We have other poets, and other writers, and other heroes, yet we do not afford them the veneration that we afford to Robert Burns."
- Len G. Murray
(Related: Heroes, Poets, Wonder, Writers)
"We make a contract within ourselves as actors or directors or writers about how much of ourselves we let into projects. You can actually figure out before you work on something how much blood you will have to let emotionally."
- Ajay Naidu
(Related: Work, Actors, Blood, Projects, Will, Writers)
"We only had enough money really to cut 10 things and be in there for a month because it's expensive, you know. And, singer/songwriters, today are lucky if they can get a deal, you know. So, we actually worked so fast that we really cut 20 things."
- Graham Nash
(Related: Money, Today)
"Stargate by far is the top of the pile when it comes to Sci-Fi. The quality is great. They have really good writers, production design, lighting, wardrobe."
- Corin Nemec
(Related: Design, Quality, Production, Writers)
"When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had."
- Howard Nemerov
(Related: Writers)
"My problem with new writers is that it takes me five or six years to memorise the right names."
- Larry Niven
(Related: Names, Right, Writers, Years)
"The comedians all finished their acts with a song. They would get a certain amount of money from the song publishers and would use that money to pay the writers. None of them paid very much for their comedy material, but it all added up."
- Denis Norden
(Related: Money, Comedians, Comedy, Song, Writers)
"Offhand, the only North American writers I can think of who have come from a background of rural poverty and gone on to write about it have been Negroes."
- Alden Nowlan
(Related: American, Poverty, Writers)
"Writers really live in the mind and in hotels of the soul."
- Edna O'Brien
(Related: Soul, Mind, Writers)
"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."
- Kate O'Brien
(Related: Opinion, University, Writers)
"Writers never get a very good deal in Hollywood."
- Richard O'Brien
(Related: Hollywood, Writers)
"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
- Flannery O'Connor
(Related: Opinion, Writers)
"Manners are of such great consequence to the novelist that any kind will do. Bad manners are better than no manners at all, and because we are losing our customary manners, we are probably overly conscious of them; this seems to be a condition that produces writers."
- Flannery O'Connor
(Related: Losing, Manners, Will, Writers)
"I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large."
- Kenzaburo Oe
(Related: Literature, World, Writers)
"They say great themes make great novels. but what these young writers don't understand is that there is no greater theme than men and women."
- John O'Hara
(Related: Men, Women, Writers)
"There are some fine books and essays about that. Lewis Hyde has written about alcoholism and poets and the role that society gives its writers - encouraging them to die."
- Sharon Olds
(Related: Society, Encouraging, Books, Poets, Writers)
"I think that there are fiction writers for whom that works well. I could never do it. I feel as if, by the time I see that it's a poem, it's almost written in my head somewhere."
- Sharon Olds
(Related: Time, Fiction, Writers)
"Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response."
- Mary Oliver
(Related: Writers, Writing)
"I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing."
- Mary Oliver
(Related: Love, Feelings, Duty, Writers)
"I remember Tim telling me that he had an idea for a musical and he said to me that he was hoping that ABBA would be writing the music, which I thought was a pretty wild idea because they were obviously known very much as pop writers."
- Elaine Paige
(Related: Music, Thought, Idea, Pretty, Writers, Writing)
"In 1986 we were trying to help women get in print, stay in print, and come to the attention of booksellers and libraries. At that time, books by men mystery writers were reviewed seven times as often as books by women."
- Sara Paretsky
(Related: Men, Women, Time, Attention, Books, Help, Libraries, Mystery, Trying, Writers)
"If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works."
- John Dos Passos
(Related: Contemplation, Hell, Writers)
"Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find some universal formula for it."
- Walter Pater
(Related: Art, Beauty, Poetry, Formula, Writers)
"It is certain, indeed, that the sacred writers were apt to make great allowances for people with empty stomachs, and though I am well aware that the present profane ones think this very reprehensible, I venture to agree with the sacred writers."
- James Payn
(Related: People, Present, Writers)
"Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society."
- Octavio Paz
(Related: Society, Writers)
"I've probably had my day in the sun. I think I've influenced a lot of comic book writers."
- Harvey Pekar
(Related: Day, Sun, Writers)
"I met Robert Crumb in 1962; he lived in Cleveland for a while. I took a look at his stuff. Crumb was doing stuff beyond what other writers and artists were doing. It was a step beyond Mad."
- Harvey Pekar
(Related: Artists, Writers)
"Mystery writers' conventions are usually good, and this one has been excellent and extremely well prepared and thought out in advance. A lot of people have given their time and their skill, and a good deal of wit, and Anchorage has made us extraordinarily welcome."
- Anne Perry
(Related: Time, Thought, People, Mystery, Skill, Wit, Writers)
"Contrary to what many writers imply about the process, nobody forces a writer to sell his work to the film industry."
- Thomas Perry
(Related: Work, Film, Writer, Writers)
"All writers are mimics, and I'm not interested in picking up somebody else's style or voice."
- Thomas Perry
(Related: Style, Voice, Writers)
"Traditionally, songwriters can't sing. And that holds true in my case, also."
- John Phillips
"As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones."
- Steven Pinker
(Related: Equality, People, Commitment, Writers)
"Since, therefore, individuals as well as the public are so indebted to these writers for the benefits they enjoy, I think them not only entitled to the honour of palms and crowns, but even to be numbered among the gods."
- Marcus V. Pollio
(Related: Gods, Benefits, Public, Writers)
"I don't have a normal job, so I really appreciate having friends who are writers and artists. It's fun to have a group of people you can call in the middle of the day to go for a hike."
- Natalie Portman
(Related: People, Artists, Day, Friends, Fun, Job, Writers)
"I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of people close to them or lives they have heard about as the raw material for their creativity."
- Chaim Potok
(Related: People, Creativity, Writers)
"Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use."
- Ezra Pound
(Related: Ability, Literature, Writers)
"Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear."
- Ezra Pound
(Related: Language, Writers)
"And that's another piece of advice I'll give junior writers; when you get to the point where they take you to lunch, let the editor suggest where to go."
- Jerry Pournelle
(Related: Advice, Writers)
"I started in this racket in the early '70s, and when I was president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, of which I was like the sixth president, I was the first one nobody ever heard of."
- Jerry Pournelle
(Related: Science, America, Fiction, First, President, Writers)
"Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day."
- Richard Price
(Related: Day, Letters, Mind, Writers, Years)
"The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence."
- J. B. Priestley
(Related: Age, Existence, Mystery, Writers)
"There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent."
- J. B. Priestley
(Related: Talent, Genius, Writers)
"Writers are not meant for action."
- Manuel Puig
(Related: Action, Writers)
"I've never seen a worse situation than that of young writers in the United States. The publishing business in North America is so commercialized."
- Manuel Puig
(Related: Business, America, Publishing, states, United, Writers)
"Ironically, Latin American countries, in their instability, give writers and intellectuals the hope that they are needed."
- Manuel Puig
(Related: Hope, American, Countries, Intellectuals, Writers)
"You can take wonderfully talented actors, wonderfully talented writers and producers, and, uh, do a wonderful show!... but if it doesn't hit with the public in two minutes, it's bye-bye."
- Charlotte Rae
(Related: Actors, Public, Writers)
"Great writers arrive among us like new diseases threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible."
- Craig Raine
(Related: Writers)
"There are times over different projects when I've asked the writers why people are swearing for no good reason. I tell them that it would be funnier if there weren't these swear words."
- John Ratzenberger
(Related: People, Projects, Reason, Swearing, Words, Writers)
"You must make the product interesting, not just make the ad different. And that's what too many of the copywriters in the U.S. today don't yet understand."
- Rosser Reeves
(Related: Today)
"Comedians are really writers who don't have pens and pencils about them, but they riff."
- Carl Reiner
(Related: Comedians, Writers)
"I'm definitely more influenced by European writers than I am by American writers, there's no doubt about that."
- Anne Rice
(Related: American, Doubt, Writers)
"You can look at the New York Times Bestseller List and you can be pretty sure that the writers on that list don't know each other very well."
- Anne Rice
(Related: Pretty, Writers)
"Writers, as they gain success, feel like outsiders because writers don't come together in real groups."
- Anne Rice
(Related: Success, Gain, Writers)
"Between us and the writers, it was comedy hour the whole time. We could hardly get through it."
- Buddy Rice
(Related: Time, Comedy, Writers)
"Alan's publishing company was in the Brill Building, and of course, the Brill Building was where all the songwriters hung out because that's where all the publishers were."
- Johnny Rivers
(Related: Building, Company, Publishing)
"I believe strongly in writing groups such as Romance Writers Of America that offer support, information and networking."
- Nora Roberts
(Related: Romance, America, Information, Support, Writers, Writing)
"And I can say this, most of the people who have recorded my songs are songwriters themselves."
- Smokey Robinson
(Related: People, Songs)
"I've always seen it as the role of an artist to drag his inside out, give the audience all you've got. Writers, actors, singers, all good artists do the same. It isn't supposed to be easy."
- Henry Rollins
(Related: Actors, Artist, Artists, Writers)
"Sportswriters. They were all my friends. They were racetrack guys and so was I."
- Art Rooney
(Related: Friends)
"Editing is the same as quarrelling with writers - same thing exactly."
- Harold Ross
(Related: Writers)
"Writers are the lunatic fringe of publishing."
- Judith Rossner
(Related: Publishing, Writers)
"Ilike ideas writers have that I might not have written. Writers are there for a reason... to write for me."
- Tim Roth
(Related: Ideas, Reason, Writers)
"Science fiction writers put characters into a world with arbitrary rules and work out what happens."
- Rudy Rucker
(Related: Science, Work, Fiction, Rules, World, Writers)
"Advice to beginning SF writers? Write a lot, finish what you write, and when it's done, keep sending it out for quite awhile."
- Rudy Rucker
(Related: Advice, Beginning, Writers)
"Some writers hate to go to trials, but I love trials."
- Ann Rule
(Related: Love, Hate, Trials, Writers)
"Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory."
- Salman Rushdie
(Related: Fight, Politicians, World, Writers)
"I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry."
- Richard Russo
(Related: Running, Worry, Writers)
"I had to prepare physically every day, and I didn't leave many scraps for the writers."
- Ryne Sandberg
(Related: Day, Writers)
"I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read."
- Carl Sandburg
(Related: People, Books, Promises, Writers)
"Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is."
- Jose Saramago
(Related: Language, Needs, Writers)
"Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds."
- Nathalie Sarraute
(Related: Literature, Trying, Universe, Will, Writers)
"Now that I'm taking some time off from school, I've been reading a lot to make sure I don't forget everything. It's mostly classics and nonfiction accounts from actors, directors and writers from the '40s and '50s."
- Fred Savage
(Related: Time, Actors, Forget, Now, Reading, School, Writers)
"Sportswriters have changed more than sportswriting."
- Dick Schaap
"How many authors are there among writers? Author means originator."
- Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
(Related: Writers)
"There are writers in Germany who drink the Absolute like water; and there are books in which even the dogs make references to the Infinite."
- Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
(Related: Books, Dogs, Germany, Infinite, Water, Writers)
"Of course, the way writers think about those things is almost certain to be affected by their own cultural background, and it would be hard to deny that, for whatever reasons, a lot of SF writers come from Anglo or European backgrounds."
- Stanley Schmidt
(Related: Writers)
"There may be something to the suggestion about the pace of technological change intimidating writers, though - it's been awfully hard to keep ahead of real developments."
- Stanley Schmidt
(Related: Change, May, Writers)
"And, of course, some SF is set close enough to here and now that Anglo and European do apply. Since many of the writers come from those backgrounds, so does much of the fiction."
- Stanley Schmidt
(Related: Fiction, Now, Writers)
"The problem was the journalists who also did not understand much of my music, but they wrote about it. I think you fell into the usual trap laid out by parts of the press and other writers: that the poor musician has always to fight the evil companies and managers."
- Klaus Schulze
(Related: Music, Evil, Fight, Managers, Poor, Press)
"Writers would submit scripts to me, and if I liked one well enough to submit to magazine editors, I had the know-how whether the story was good or bad."
- Julius Schwartz
(Related: Editors, Writers)
"I get so used to working with writers that my prime occupation is development."
- Ridley Scott
(Related: Development, Occupation, Writers)
"The thing with being on a series that runs that long is that the writers run out of things to do."
- Ted Shackelford
(Related: Being, Writers)
"Writing in English was a major challenge. I didn't want other songwriters to write for me. I wanted to preserve the spirit of my songs in Spanish. I am the same Shakira in English as I am in Spanish."
- Shakira
(Related: Challenge, English, Songs, Spirit, Want, Writing)
"With network shows, writers can be so protective of every syllable."
- Michael Shanks
(Related: Network, Writers)
"I would say the next imminent hot writers are often the writers from the decade before you were born."
- Fiona Shaw
(Related: Writers)
"I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Formula, Style, Writers)
"Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Life, Work, states, United, Writers)
"At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Being, Writers)
"All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Forget, Writers)
"Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Fiction, Writers)
"The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Care, Writers)
"Kennedy was a man who liked writers and even I got invited to the White House."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Man, Writers)
"Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Work, People, Routine, Want, Writers, Writing)
"One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers."
- Wilfrid Sheed
(Related: Wisdom, Opinion, Race, Reason, Writers)
"I feel it is time that I also pay tribute to my four writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John."
- Fulton J. Sheen
(Related: Time, Tribute, Writers)
"Labels only confuse people. The smarter people recognize artists who transcend categories. But I always try to entertain. It's in my nature; writers are born to entertain. If that means working ostensibly within a genre, fine."
- John Shirley
(Related: Nature, People, Artists, Writers)
"I had to produce a complete page - or two or three - in one day. I took a lot of pride in my work, and I hated to do a mediocre job. Evidently, some of the writers enjoyed my work best of all for that very reason."
- Joe Shuster
(Related: Work, Day, Job, Pride, Reason, Writers)
"But the French writers always had more originality and independence than others, and that regulator, which elsewhere was religion, long since ceased to exist for them."
- Henryk Sienkiewicz
(Related: Religion, Independence, Originality, Writers)
"This homage has been rendered not to me - for the Polish soil is fertile and does not lack better writers than me - but to the Polish achievement, the Polish genius."
- Henryk Sienkiewicz
(Related: Genius, Achievement, Writers)
"It's one of the strangest attributes of this profession that when we writers get exhausted writing one thing, we relax by writing another."
- Dan Simmons
(Related: Profession, Relax, Writers, Writing)
"It may not be the most popular but there is a place for it. I think about the kind of music I love, acoustic, melodic, and I guess it kind of took a bit of courage on my part to think I could be one of those songwriters."
- Helen Slater
(Related: Music, Love, Courage, May, Popular)
"Challenge America grants go to the towns and hamlets of this sprawling country, where big touring companies will rarely go, and major actors, actresses, writers and artists may never appear in person."
- Louise Slaughter
(Related: Actors, America, Artists, Challenge, Country, May, Will, Writers)
"Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers."
- Logan P. Smith
(Related: Will, Writers)
"Yet, it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love, lust, longing; joy, rage, fear; triumph, yearning and confusion."
- Tony Snow
(Related: Music, Love, Politics, Fear, Confusion, Joy, Longing, Lust, Moods, Obvious, Writers, Yearning)
"Well, so far, at least, my own ideas always take priority over those of other writers. As long as the well doesn't run dry, I imagine this will be the case."
- Todd Solondz
(Related: Ideas, Will, Writers)
"For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
(Related: Government, Country, Writer, Writers)
"For a country to have a great writer is like having another government. That's why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones."
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
(Related: Government, Country, Writer, Writers)
"Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it."
- Stephen Sondheim
(Related: Language, Poets, Poor, Writers)
"Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright."
- Aaron Sorkin
(Related: Writers)
"I still feel the impulse to give young writers a hearing, and I believe I have played more unpublished compositions than any other band leader in the country."
- John Philip Sousa
(Related: Leader, Country, Hearing, Writers)
"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."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Machine, Writers, Writing)
"My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being."
- Wole Soyinka
(Related: Music, Being, Humanity, Listening, Nothing, Opera, Painting, Poems, Reading, Struggle, Writers)
"Before you approach a production entity or even a potential producer, you should write up a treatment and register your show with the Writers Guild of America."
- Penelope Spheeris
(Related: America, Potential, Production, Treatment, Writers)
"I've heard from writers and musicians and fans that they think I'm underrated."
- Rick Springfield
(Related: Fans, Musicians, Writers)
"Many writers upon the science of political economy have declared that it is the duty of a nation first to encourage the creation of wealth; and second, to direct and control its distribution. All such theories are delusive."
- Leland Stanford
(Related: Science, Control, Wealth, Creation, Duty, Economy, First, Nation, Theories, Writers)
"George was getting alot of independence for himself in those days. He was writing more, and wanted things to go his way - where, when we first started things basically went John and Paul's way. You know, 'cuz they were the writers."
- Ringo Starr
(Related: First, Independence, Writers, Writing)
"I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed."
- Gertrude Stein
(Related: Portraits, Writers)
"Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals."
- John Steinbeck
(Related: Clowns, Writers)
"It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now."
- Stendhal
(Related: Nobility, Now, Style, Will, Writers, Years)
"Unlike the majority of the writers of his age, La Rochefoucauld was an aristocrat; and this fact gives a peculiar tone to his work."
- Lytton Strachey
(Related: Work, Age, Fact, Majority, Writers)
"In pure literature, the writers of the eighteenth century achieved, indeed, many triumphs; but their great, their peculiar, triumphs were in the domain of thought."
- Lytton Strachey
(Related: Thought, Literature, Writers)
"In sheer genius Pascal ranks among the very greatest writers who have lived upon this earth. And his genius was not simply artistic; it displayed itself no less in his character and in the quality of his thought."
- Lytton Strachey
(Related: Quality, Genius, Thought, Character, Earth, Writers)
"And I have the support of the writers: I have a great relationship with the creative team, and they have a good hold of my character and my personality, and they come up with some great stuff, and I'm forever trying to change it up, keep it fresh."
- Trish Stratus
(Related: Change, Character, Personality, Support, Trying)
"Many fiction writers eventually want to feel that their work forms a single, unified entity."
- Peter Straub
(Related: Work, Fiction, Want, Writers)
"Nobody is surprised that women writers accurately represent male characters over and over again, no doubt because everybody knows that women understand men much better than vice-versa."
- Peter Straub
(Related: Men, Women, Doubt, Vice, Writers)
"Country people give me more than writers, and country places than towns."
- Leonard Alfred George Strong
(Related: People, Country, Writers)
"Some major writers have a huge impact, like Ayn Rand, who to my mind is a lousy fiction writer because her writing has no compassion and virtually no humor. She has a philosophical and economical message that she is passing off as fiction, but it really isn't fiction at all."
- Theodore Sturgeon
(Related: Humor, Compassion, Fiction, Mind, Writer, Writers, Writing)
"The writers keep managing to turn the show in on itself, coming up with something that's well thought-out and miraculous."
- Kiefer Sutherland
(Related: Thought, Writers)
"But sometimes the women writers will pitch something and I'll hear it, but the men will keep talking."
- Wanda Sykes
(Related: Men, Women, Talking, Will, Writers)
"When you have a foreign invasion - in this case by the Indonesian army - writers, intellectuals, newspapers and magazines are the first targets of repression."
- Antonio Tabucchi
(Related: Army, First, Intellectuals, Newspapers, Repression, Writers)
"It's the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection."
- Antonio Tabucchi
(Related: Doubt, Intellectuals, Job, Perfection, Writers)
"Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden."
- Amy Tan
(Related: Burden, Culture, Responsibility, Writers)
"On the other hand, I mean, that is what writers have always been supposed to do, was to rely on their own devices and to - I mean, writing is a lonely business."
- Donna Tartt
(Related: Business, Lonely, Writers, Writing)
"I do remember actually learning chords to Beatles songs. I thought they were great songwriters."
- Mick Taylor
(Related: Thought, Learning, Songs)
"The only people who have the long view are some scientists and some science fiction writers."
- Sheri S. Tepper
(Related: Science, People, Fiction, Scientists, Writers)
"There are writers who say they have no social responsibility except to write a good book, but that doesn't satisfy me."
- Sheri S. Tepper
(Related: Responsibility, Writers)
"So there was a constant flow and a thin line there between reality and television and yes, much of what I was experiencing in my real life was also what was going on in the television show to the extent that I had to take writers' advice and from the counselors around."
- Alan Thicke
(Related: Life, Advice, Reality, Television, Writers)
"The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth."
- James Thurber
(Related: Humor, Artists, Nation, Writers)
"There's a lot of Latinos right now, a lot of filmmakers and writers that are Latin too."
- Benicio Del Toro
(Related: Now, Right, Writers)
"Perhaps, all writers walk such a line. In general - as we all do in our dreams - I believe I put something of myself into all the characters in my novels, male as well as female."
- Rose Tremain
(Related: Dreams, Writers)
"I'm always amazed by writers who tell me they plan everything at the beginning. I feel their writing days must be very bland."
- Rose Tremain
(Related: Beginning, Writers, Writing)
"What a revolting contrast exists in England between the slavery of women and the intellectual superiority of women writers."
- Flora Tristan
(Related: Women, Superiority, Contrast, England, Slavery, Writers)
"What we need is more women writers, writing for older women. There are some actresses who have production companies and create their own material, and I truly admire that."
- Kathleen Turner
(Related: Women, Production, Writers, Writing)
"Get more women producers, writers, directors. Why should we expect men to do it for us? They can't."
- Kathleen Turner
(Related: Men, Women, Writers)
"I think it must be very hard to be one of the new young writers who are urged to put themselves forward when it may be the last thing on earth they'd be good at."
- Anne Tyler
(Related: Earth, May, Writers)
"I kind of thought the writers were starting to take Taylor and make her kind of down and dirty."
- Hunter Tylo
(Related: Thought, Writers)
"Sure, women sportswriters look when they're in the clubhouse. Read their stories. How else do you explain a capital letter in the middle of a word?"
- Bob Uecker
(Related: Women, Word)
"Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone."
- John Updike
(Related: May, Writers)
"I enjoy writing, sometimes; I think that most writers will tell you about the agony of writing more than the joy of writing, but writing is what I was meant to do."
- Leon Uris
(Related: Joy, Will, Writers, Writing)
"As an inspiration to the author, I do not think the cat can be over-estimated. He suggests so much grace, power, beauty, motion, mysticism. I do not wonder that many writers love cats; I am only surprised that all do not."
- Carl Van Vechten
(Related: Love, Beauty, Power, Inspiration, Cats, Grace, Wonder, Writers)
"Sometimes I listen to songs by very smart writers who assume that the world is a civil place with certain formalities that people follow, but I don't see things that way. My own experience tells me that life is not like that."
- Suzanne Vega
(Related: Experience, Life, People, Songs, World, Writers)
"That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers."
- Gore Vidal
(Related: Books, Busyness, May, World, Writers)
"Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made."
- Gore Vidal
(Related: Time, Virtue, Literature, World, Writers)
"Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences."
- Gore Vidal
(Related: Audiences, Writers)
"The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors."
- Vernor Vinge
(Related: Science, Fiction, Will, Writers)
"Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another."
- Voltaire
(Related: Imitation, Nothing, Originality, Writers)
"As I said earlier, there are no writers who could create a literary vision of the new reality."
- Andrzej Wajda
(Related: Vision, Literary, Reality, Writers)
"I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers."
- Diane Wakoski
(Related: Poetry, American, Question, Tradition, Writers)
"Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for."
- Alice Walker
(Related: Art, Earth, Writers)
"It has been generally the custom of writers on natural history to take the habits and instincts of animals as the fixed point, and to consider their structure and organization as specially adapted to be in accordance with them."
- Alfred Russel Wallace
(Related: History, Animals, Custom, Habits, Writers)
"This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Talking, Writers)
"I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader."
- David Foster Wallace
(Related: Desire, Writers)
"Writers' bedtimes vary, but few have been spared the shock of a copy editor's early wake-up call."
- Bill Walsh
(Related: Writers)
"Writing headlines is a specialty - there are outstanding writers who will tell you they couldn't write a headline to save their lives."
- Bill Walsh
(Related: Will, Writers, Writing)
"During my life I have seen, known, and lost too much to be the prey of vain dread; and, as for the hope of immortality, I am as weary of that as I am of gods and kings. For my own sake only I write this; and herein I differ from all other writers, past and to come."
- Mika Waltari
(Related: Life, Gods, Hope, Immortality, Kings, Past, Writers)
"The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers."
- Barbara Walters
(Related: May, World, Writers)
"Why would they have gone to the trouble to hire the best comedy writers in the business to write funny material for us to play straight, if the children in our audience were the only audience."
- Burt Ward
(Related: Business, Funny, Children, Comedy, Play, Trouble, Writers)
"Unfortunately, there are writers whose only concern is how good they could make themselves look on a title."
- Len Wein
(Related: Concern, Writers)
"It's all about who's where on the food chain. When I'm the story editor, I expect my writers to follow my vision. When I'm working for another editor, I'm obliged to follow their vision."
- Len Wein
(Related: Food, Vision, Writers)
"It's also that comedians don't have the kind of narcissism that actors have. They're writers who perform their own material. It's more interesting. And they're sexy because they risk more. Stand-up comedians risk more than anyone."
- Rachel Weisz
(Related: Actors, Comedians, Risk, Writers)
"I think ethnic and regional labels are insulting to writers and really put restrictions on them. People don't think your work is quite as universal."
- James Welch
(Related: Work, People, Writers)
"All writers of the Chaldaean period associate monotheism in the closest way with unity of worship."
- Julius Wellhausen
(Related: Unity, Worship, Writers)
"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
(Related: Business, First, Information, Necessity, Research, Trying, Writers, Writing)
"Writers and travelers are mesmerized alike by knowing of their destinations."
- Eudora Welty
(Related: Writers)
"It had more layers than an onion. These writers meant business. There was a level for everybody. Your major could be celestial mechanics, and there'd be celestial-mechanics jokes."
- Billy West
(Related: Business, Jokes, Writers)
"Most producers I've known were writers first, and writing is a vital part of any game show. You could easily argue that the writing is the key ingredient that makes 'Jeopardy!' so great."
- Randy West
(Related: First, Key, Writers, Writing)
"The classical writers... playwrights, Jacobean, Elizabethan playwrights, all showed areas of all classes and how they live and painted them pretty authentically."
- Timothy West
(Related: Pretty, Writers)
"The many magazines, ranging from pulp to slick, that used to serve as both farm teams for writers and lures to readers, with hundreds of short stories every month, don't exist. Most of the doors for new people have been sealed."
- Donald E. Westlake
(Related: People, Writers)
"I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether."
- Alfred North Whitehead
(Related: Meaning, Writers)
"That's really what was wonderful for me growing up, since I got to know so many of the songwriters who liked me and thought I had talent. They would then tell me how to read a lyric and sing a song, and challenge me to try and find a different end to a song."
- Margaret Whiting
(Related: Talent, Thought, Challenge, End, Growing up, Song)
"We teach young kids from 8 to 14 or 15 about their musical heritage through great songs written by American songwriters. We don't do too many modern composers, although we include songs from Billy Joel and other writers like him."
- Margaret Whiting
(Related: American, Composers, Kids, Songs, Writers)
"I have no ghost writers. I personally write every message and every piece of published mail."
- David Wilkerson
(Related: Mail, Writers)
"Writers are too neurotic to ever be happy."
- Connie Willis
(Related: Writers)
"Since fantasy isn't about technology, the accelleration has no impact at all. But it's changed the lives of fantasy writers and editors. I get to live in England and work for a New York publisher!"
- Terri Windling
(Related: Work, Technology, Editors, EnglFantasy, Writers)
"I'd like to encourage people to please keep reading-and most importantly, to please keep trying new writers. The only way we can bring fresh new material into the field is if people go out and buy it."
- Terri Windling
(Related: People, Reading, Trying, Writers)
"Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create."
- Jeanette Winterson
(Related: Being, Listening, Writers)
"There are professional negotiators working for the writers and the actors, but basically you've got the writers and actors negotiating against businessmen. That's why you get rhetoric."
- Dick Wolf
(Related: Actors, Rhetoric, Writers)
"My whole life experience feeds into my writing. I think that must be true for every writer. Clearly the Army and combat were major influences; just the same, you need to understand that many of the writers we have now couldn't load a revolver."
- Gene Wolfe
(Related: Experience, Life, Army, Now, Writer, Writers, Writing)
"But a lot of writers - and I'm one of them - do tend to feel dissatisfied. It makes you a little hard to live with, but it's a goad and does keep you alert and restless."
- Tobias Wolff
(Related: Writers)
"There are writers who do start doing the same thing again and again and almost inevitably fall into self-parody."
- Tobias Wolff
(Related: Self, Writers)
"Like so many writers I started writing stories because I didn't have much time for anything else."
- Tobias Wolff
(Related: Time, Writers, Writing)
"And you can tell the writers who do it - Robert Stone, for example, who with each new novel is doing something new. I appreciate that in other writers."
- Tobias Wolff
(Related: Example, Writers)
"I'm more concerned with getting them to find and strengthen their original voice as writers rather than imposing my own subjective tastes, judgements or sensibility on the project."
- Douglas Wood
(Related: Project, Sensibility, Voice, Writers)
"I'm quite sure that most writers would sustain real poetry if they could, but it takes devotion and talent."
- Marguerite Young
(Related: Poetry, Talent, Devotion, Writers)
"Some of the poetic writers who insert passages of realism in their texts have no underlying philosophy to uphold them, and revert to realism."
- Marguerite Young
(Related: Philosophy, Realism, Writers)
"Today, for a Jew who writes in the German language, it is totally impossible to make a living. In no group do I see as much misery, disappointment, desperation and hopelessness as in Jewish writers who write in German."
- Stefan Zweig
(Related: Desperation, Disappointment, Language, Living, Misery, Today, Writers)