Writers Quotes

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.

Writers know that sometimes things are there in the drawer for decades before they finally come out and you are capable of writing about them.

Painters of paintings, writers of books, never could tell the half.

My father, George, has also affected the choices in my life regarding films. I like films that take chances or say something different or experiment. Growing up with him, I was surrounded by different artists - not just actors or film-makers but cartoonists, poets, writers.

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.

We teach young kids from 8 to 14 or 15 about their musical heritage through great songs written by American songwriters. We don't do too many modern composers, although we include songs from Billy Joel and other writers like him.

I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry.

If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs.

Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day.

If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers.

Well, certainly I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they haven't got one immediately available to them, then they usually manage to manufacture it in their private lives.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

I understand that postmodern literature probably means people like DeLillo, The Fiction Collective, but I don't get it that those writers are really influenced by postmodern theorists.

Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.

It's all about who's where on the food chain. When I'm the story editor, I expect my writers to follow my vision. When I'm working for another editor, I'm obliged to follow their vision.

Many fiction writers eventually want to feel that their work forms a single, unified entity.

One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers.

When I think about writers who use fiction as social commentary and to raise social awareness but who are also very popular, I think of Dickens.

The writers I respect the most had an undying commitment to a vision.

Why my interest in writers? Well, I'm one, and many of my friends are writers. I know what it's like to write. I'm interested in the creative process. I'm fascinated by the disparity between who we are on the outside, and what we have bubbling away inside us.

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

As I said earlier, there are no writers who could create a literary vision of the new reality.

Today, there are more opportunities for writers in terms of access to larger success, but it's more difficult to publish a literary novel in the lower ranges. In other words, you almost have to hit a home run. You can hit a triple, maybe, but nobody's interested in a single.

It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.

In 1986 we were trying to help women get in print, stay in print, and come to the attention of booksellers and libraries. At that time, books by men mystery writers were reviewed seven times as often as books by women.

Writers tell stories better, because they've had more practice, but everyone has a book in them. Yes, that old cliche.

Since I was there in the very beginning, I know the history of the characters. So, I make comments about the tone and sometimes remind the writers that we've done that before.

World War II is the greatest drama in human history, the biggest war ever and a true battle of good and evil. I imagine writers will continue to get stories from it, and readers will continue to love them, for many more years.

I was notified on July 17 to be ready to start August 7 for an October air date. When we reached the screen we did not have a single segment ready. It was done so fast the writers never got a chance to know what it was all about.

Today, writers want to impress other writers.