Writer Quotes

The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.

I want to photograph what I see and put it in a dramatic context. I'm an actor and a writer, and I want to tell these stories and present these shapes, colors and movements as I see them, as I see them serve a narrative. As I see that narrative serve an audience. That's what I want to do.

People are always saying that I must have been the class clown, with all these voices. No, I was way too shy to be the class clown; I was a class clown's writer.

When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.

I really believe that a writer is someone who has trained their mind to misbehave.

I'm a writer. An amateur photographer. An actor.

A writer's work often reflects what he or she has been exposed to in life; experiences which are the groundwork of a poem or a story.

Chekhov - shall I be blunt? - is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.

My primary lesson, however, was that I'm a solo writer, happiest when I'm making all the executive decisions. I've always been willing to rise or fall on my own merits.

To be a writer does not mean to preach a truth, it means to discover a truth.

A writer never reads his work. For him, it is the unreadable, a secret, and he cannot remain face to face with it. A secret, because he is separated from it.

Some major writers have a huge impact, like Ayn Rand, who to my mind is a lousy fiction writer because her writing has no compassion and virtually no humor. She has a philosophical and economical message that she is passing off as fiction, but it really isn't fiction at all.

I had no idea that 'Less Than Zero' was going to be read by anyone outside of Los Angeles, and it's - believe me, as the writer of the book I'm somewhat amused and intrigued by the idea that 25 years later it's still out and people are still reading it.

If you take my stuff apart, you'll find my choruses of repetitions are picked up almost verbatim from Kurt Vonnegut, and my distanced fracture quality is all from Amy Hempel, who's probably my favourite writer.

The Architect is just one of a series of works which examine the confrontation of innocence and experience, illustrating the complex ethics of power that exist between reader and writer, critic and artist, the human and the divine.

The fact that I am a writer comes from the experience of being cut away from my roots and living in Venezuela, where I couldn't find a place for myself, for years and years.

Paper and ink are all but trash, if I cannot find the thought which the writer did think.

One reason I don't suffer Writer's Block is that I don't wait on the muse, I summon it at need.

I got a lovely check today from being a writer that I earned by sitting at home. That's rewarding.

I'm a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

A young musician plays scales in his room and only bores his family. A beginning writer, on the other hand, sometimes has the misfortune of getting into print.

One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.

A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.

Peter Lucas and I live in Durham but spend a great of time in North Wales, where we have a cottage in the mountains, and in Vermont, USA, with my sister - who is a children's writer married to a poet.

I'm a writer, not a professional runner. It's fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration.

By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.

Look, in 1800 the sainted Thomas Jefferson arranged to hire a notorious slanderer named James Callender, who worked as a writer at a Republican newspaper in Richmond, Va. Read some of what he wrote about John Adams. This was a personal slander.

If you want to know why all writers are a little crazy read 'The Midnight Disease' by Alice W. Flaherty. She talks about the drive to write, writer's block, and the creative brain. I know what's wrong with me!

I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and hope that no one runs away.