Writer Quotes

When I was a child I used to read books by Gerald Durrell, who founded Jersey Zoo. He had a job collecting animals for zoos and for a long time that is what I wanted to do. Later when I was a teenager I had a fantastic English teacher called Mrs. Stafford. Her enthusiasm made me decide to be a writer.

Not having any real direction, one writer would lead me to another.

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.

It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.

You can't be too old to be a writer, but you can definitely be too young!

I made a conscious decision that I was not going to have children. I didn't want others raising them, and looking after them myself would get in the way of being a musician and writer.

I certainly don't think I would have been asked to pose for Rage if I wasn't a known writer.

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.

Four years earlier I had been selected, with Kay Boyle, the writer, and a number of others, to go to Cambodia and come back and prove that there were no sanctuaries in that country.

I think my job is to try and be as honest as I can with what is in my mind and how I feel - I think that's what you're supposed to do, if you're a good writer. So I try to do that. I know I do that. I do do that.

I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

That, for me, is a very important test of a young writer's commitment because most of them are going to have to continue doing that when they've finished the program.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

The acting is something that will always be a part of my life, but the writing gives me a lot more creative freedom. You're a pawn in somebody else's chess game, whereas as a writer and as a director, you get to call the shots. And that's very thrilling.

Kafka is still unrecognized. He thought he was a comic writer.

I wanted to use what I was, to be what I was born to be - not to have a 'career', but to be that straightforward obvious unmistakable animal, a writer.

A literary journal is intended to connect writer with reader; the role of the editor is to mediate.

I'm a writer, and what I do is write. I wasn't able to do anything else.

I have several writer friends, but I don't involve them in my work process. I'm more likely to talk about the business of publishing with them.

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.

A workshop is a way of renting an audience, and making sure you're communicating what you think you're communicating. It's so easy as a young writer to think you're been very clear when in fact you haven't.

Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.

The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.

I wanted to do - there was this film called 'Magic' that Anthony Hopkins did. And the director wanted me. The writer wanted me. Joe Levine said no, I don't want any comedians in this.

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

You don't say, I'm going to be a writer when I grow up - at least I didn't.

I am a comic writer, which means I get to slay the dragons, and shoot the bull.