Writers Quotes

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.

And if you want to know why great editors scare the pants off of writers everywhere, read 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' by Lynne Truss. The punctuation police are everywhere!

I've been trying to find women writers for my staff for a while now and I have three women on my staff and three guys so it's pretty equal. I don't know why that is. It's been the same thing for a while. It's hard for female comedians to stand out. That's weird. That's a shame.

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.

So I made a request. I said to the writers, I have a minor request that I just want to play a loser.

Writers can write outside their ethnicity or sex depending how open and vulnerable they wish to be.

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.

Our great American writers were all newspaper people.

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.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

There are writers who say they have no social responsibility except to write a good book, but that doesn't satisfy me.

Rock and roll stars have it much better than writers when they're on a tour.

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.

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.

If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that, I don't think.

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.

I've told several writers this, and, again, I get back to it, but if you want to make God smile, tell him your plans.

No language is rude that can boast polite writers.

Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.

As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.

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.

I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry.

Let's face it, the great comedians now that are handicapped in the looks department are tremendous 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.

When I was 17, I worked in a mentoring program in Harlem designed to improve the community. That's when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African-Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers.

I find the songs I want to record by listening to as much music as I can. 'When I hear things I really like, I ask the writers to send me a tape of everything they've ever written.

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.

The daily act of writing remains as demanding and maddening as it was before, and the pleasure you get from writing - rare but profound - remains at the true heart of the enterprise. On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching.

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.

Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.