Writers Quotes

Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.

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.

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.

The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.

I still feel the impulse to give young writers a hearing, and I believe I have played more unpublished compositions than any other band leader in the country.

I was a pretty good fighter. But it was the writers who made me great.

I never want to be called the funniest Indian female comedian that exists. I feel like I can go head-to-head with the best white, male comedy writers that are out there. Why would I want to self-categorize myself into a smaller group than I'm able to compete in?

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.

The classical writers... playwrights, Jacobean, Elizabethan playwrights, all showed areas of all classes and how they live and painted them pretty authentically.

They're naughty, all those writers - they mess around with people. I know James Gandolfini got a bit fed up on 'The Sopranos': if he said anything in front of a writer, told them a story from his life, it could make its way into the script.

Directors and writers have a lot of stress as well, because they have people they answer to.

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.

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

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

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

Writers are storytellers. So are readers.

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.

Comedy writers have the most fragile egos.

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?'

I have no agenda except to be funny. Neither I or the writers profess to offer any worldly wisdom.

Most writers can write, most rock 'n rollers cannot.

When I went from being an academic to being a member of the community of writers some of my former colleagues did look on me with a certain resentment.

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.

Writers' bedtimes vary, but few have been spared the shock of a copy editor's early wake-up call.

It's not easy to tell a story about writers and make that feel like a complete story and an interesting story.

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.