Writer Quotes

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

I write because I write - as anyone in the arts does. You're a painter because you feel you have no choice but to paint. You're a writer because this is what you do.

The mind of the writer does indeed do something before it dies, and so does its owner, but I would be hard put to call it living.

Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.

Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

I think people are starting to think of me less as an actor and more as a writer.

I've been writing about James Fenimore Cooper. He was not a writer. Here was a man who was 30 years old and had never put anything more than his signature on paper.

As a writer no one's gonna tell me how to write, I'm gonna write the way I wanna write!

The epiphany for me was that I wasn't a writer, and I had to do something with these texts. I put them in the streets as posters.

Since I can barely write two books a year the best solution seems to be co-author projects. My goal isn't to get another writer to clone me... it's more to produce a book that shares my vision of positive, fun entertainment.

The relationship between reader and characters is very difficult. It is even more peculiar than the relationship between the writer and his characters.

The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.

Each book tends to have its own identity rather than the author's. It speaks from itself rather than you. Each book is unlike the others because you are not bringing the same voice to every book. I think that keeps you alive as a writer.

I was training to be a lawyer... I was president of the law society at Glasgow University, and my bass guitarist was my secretary of my law society; the lead guitarist and writer worked at the law firm that I worked.

As a writer, or as a filmmaker, you have to present yourself, and part of what yourself is is what you're interested in, or what you think is funny, or what you think is sad, or what you think is horrible.

I'm not a very fancy person. I've been a writer a long time, and right now 'The Hunger Games' is getting a lot of focus. It'll pass. The focus will be on something else. It'll shift. It always does. And that seems just fine.

A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.

I think plays, like books, are endemic. They grow out of the soil of the writer and the place he's writing about. I think, you just can't move them about, you know.

I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.

I really wanted to be a writer.

One truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it's the integrity of the writer as he matches with the language.

It's probably why I'm a short story writer. I tend to remember things in the past in narrative form, in story form, and I grew up around people who told stories all the time.

You want to be a writer, don't know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.

I've never been a fearful person. When I was growing up, I wanted to be an actress, a writer, and a musician and I never really processed that those are the three hardest jobs - I just never even processed it.

That process by which you become a writer is a pretty lonely one. We don't have a group apprenticeship like a violinist might training for an orchestra.

Richard Hugo taught me that anyone with a desire to write, an ear for language and a bit of imagination could become a writer. He also, in a way, gave me permission to write about northern Montana.

Raymond Carver is good. I think he'll be appreciated more and more. He's an easy writer to imitate.

Anyone can write one book: even politicians do it. Starting a second book reveals an intention to be a professional writer.

A whole album to one writer - now that would be really interesting.

For a writer it's a dream to sit and watch people as close as possible.