Writer Quotes

In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.

Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.

About a year ago I got really exhausted from reading bad scripts and I know that I am a writer and that I have stories to tell, so I thought, 'Let's do this!' So I'm co-writing a screenplay now with another screenwriter and loving it. Absolutely loving it. And I would like to be the producer on the project and of course the lead is me.

I was very pleased, obviously, to have outsold such great writers. But I'm not insane - I do realize that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation.

I've known Shawn for several years. And he's just an amazing talent. He's a great writer, a marvelous, marvelous guitar player, and plays really good fiddle.

A writer's job is to tell the truth.

As a writer, you can't allow yourself the luxury of being discouraged and giving up when you are rejected, either by agents or publishers. You absolutely must plow forward.

All the time, I've felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn't.

I haven't been the kind of writer about whom book-length academic studies have been written.

I wouldn't not want to be a director and write as I wouldn't not to want to be a writer and direct movies.

Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books.

I'm not going to get into the writer's skills or what he was trying to portray because that's not fair. I can only say what I felt was trying to be portrayed there.

I'm not a great joke writer, which is odd for a comic to say, but I'm not.

At an early school, when I was about 5, they asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Everyone said silly things, and I said I wanted to be an actress. So that was what I wanted to be, but what I was, of course, was a writer.

Journalist: a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them; a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time he has, the worse he writes.

I have no problem selling books to media franchises and we do it all the time. The author must understand that he/she is a writer for hire and has no control over copyright or over editorial changes made to the text.

I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.

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.

The writer studies literature, not the world.

Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

If a lecturer, he wishes to be heard; if a writer, to be read. He always hopes for a public beyond that of the long-suffering wife.

I'm a writer who just happens to draw.

When he died, Emerson was thought of as the representative American writer par excellence, and his point of view was still so potent that William James was honored to be asked to speak at a centenary celebration.

I've experienced writer's block, but never for more than a few days.

The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.

Arnold Bennett was a writer I admired. He was actually taking notes at his father's deathbed.

A writer can't subtract or excise any of his/her past because doing so would erase the work produced during that time.

It is one test of a fully developed writer that he reminds us of no one but himself.

As a writer, I've always been interested in others.