Writers Quotes

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.

There are writers who do start doing the same thing again and again and almost inevitably fall into self-parody.

Comedians are really writers who don't have pens and pencils about them, but they riff.

Writers have told me more than once that I'm a better interview in defeat than in victory, which is a compliment I am extremely proud of.

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.

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.

There's something with the physical size of America... American writers can write about America and it can still feel like a foreign country.

I think what I would say to my younger self, and probably to younger, just starting-out writers is that a lot of times you're just afraid to put yourself out there, and it's uncomfortable because it's working up the courage to do something, to push yourself to do those things.

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.

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.

Writers will happen in the best of families.

I think my knowledge of music theory is rooted in jazz theory, and a lot of the writers of standards - Rodgers and Hart, and Gershwin.

I believe that a writer learns from every story he writes, and when you try different things, you learn different lessons. Working with other writers, as in Hollywood or in a shared world series, will also strengthen your skills, by exposing you to new ways of seeing the work, and different approaches to certain creative challenges.

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.

But sometimes the women writers will pitch something and I'll hear it, but the men will keep talking.

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.

I never really like it when other writers talk about coming in behind people and rewriting.

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.

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.

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.

Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand.

It's a fallacy that writers have to shut themselves up in their ivory towers to write. I have all these interruptions, three of which I gave birth to. If I was thrown for a loop every time I was distracted I could never get anything done.

I had to prepare physically every day, and I didn't leave many scraps for the writers.

There's a lot of Latinos right now, a lot of filmmakers and writers that are Latin too.

How many authors are there among writers? Author means originator.

I'm quite sure that most writers would sustain real poetry if they could, but it takes devotion and talent.

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.

When you have a foreign invasion - in this case by the Indonesian army - writers, intellectuals, newspapers and magazines are the first targets of repression.

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.

Writers don't retire. I will always be a writer.