Top 665 Writer Quotes

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.

A stage play is basically a form of uber-schizophrenia. You split yourself into two minds – one being the protagonist and the other being the antagonist. The playwright also splits himself into two other minds: the mind of the writer and the mind of the audience.

I think my job is to try and be as honest as I can with what is in my mind and how I feel – I think that’s what you’re supposed to do, if you’re a good writer. So I try to do that. I know I do that. I do do that.

Even though my songs may sound very personal, to me most of them are fiction. It is a great way for me to be able to live a fantasy life as a writer because I get to be someone else, someplace else for three and a half minutes, just like the listener.

I’m a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.

I began running on an everyday basis after I became a writer. As being a writer requires sitting at a desk for hours a day, without getting some exercise you’d quickly get out of shape and gain weight, I figured.

Whoever has the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. Because a character will never die! A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die!

Well, to be honest I think I’m a better short story writer than a novelist. Novels I find very hard, hours and hours, weeks and weeks, of conscious thought – whereas short stories slip out painlessly in a few days.

As coaches, we learn to accept criticism for our decisions. If a writer says you shouldn’t have gone for it on fourth-and-one, we understand that’s part of the job. We expect it.

You need to keep something for yourself. As a writer, I feel that even more strongly. I feel like I need to be able to freely observe the world. That’s the way I like to move through the world; I don’t need to be the focus of attention. If I am, it impairs my ability to write and to do what I do.

A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.

The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream.

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call ‘the breaks.’ In order for a writer to succeed, I suggest three things – read and write – and wait.

I think my best quality as a writer is the ability to craft complicated, nuanced, interesting characters.

A film writer is very much like a party girl. While you’re good-looking and still unlined, the possibilities seem endless. But your appeal doesn’t last long and you’re quickly discarded.

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.

Thinking about death makes you analyse what life is. Anxiety makes you curious, and curiosity leads to understanding. I wouldn’t be a writer without depression.

I’m a writer. I don’t support any war. That’s my principle.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

My biggest excuse to others and myself was that I had writer’s block, as if it was some kind of illness.

It must be extremely uncomfortable to live with a writer – all that preoccupation and brooding.

A writer uses a pen instead of a scalpel or blow torch.

I eventually want to do writing on all the films, but not necessarily to be the writer. Writing is a painful, painful thing; it really is.

I love Maira Kalman. She’s an amazing illustrator and writer. I’ve loved her since I was in college, but when I moved to New York and experienced the same city she was drawing and writing about, I developed a whole new appreciation. Her work made me observe everything so much deeper and more joyfully.

I could have been a cult writer if I’d kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I could write a realistic book.

A writer doesn’t write about just anything. He writes about things he has an affinity for.

The interesting thing about fiction from a writer’s standpoint is that the characters come to life within you. And yet who are they and where are they? They seem to have as much or more vitality and complexity as the people around you.

I was a writer. I couldn’t sell anything, and the comedians were among the dumbest people I had ever met. They’d all say to me, ‘The average man won’t understand it.’ You know, they’re superior to the average man.

‘True Romance’ was definitely, in part, still me finding my voice as a writer. I was nervous, and I was a lot more shy. The album sounds bruised.

As a writer, I’m more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

I guess my music career is my personal life. You know, I’ve always been a writer who wants to write about my experiences. And so this experience being added to that, I – I want to live extraordinary experiences. And when I give advice to people, I want it to be sage advice.

A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

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’m a writer; as soon as I imagine what would happen if I found the fountain of youth, it turns into a dystopia in my head.

Inside of all the makeup and the character and makeup, it’s you, and I think that’s what the audience is really interested in… you, how you’re going to cope with the situation, the obstacles, the troubles that the writer put in front of you.

What writer wants to make compromises with story? Story is the only reason you’re in it.

I believe it is important to speak to your readers in person… to enable people to have a whole picture of me; I have to both write and speak. I view my role as writer and also as oral communicator.

Before I ever heard about ’60 Minutes,’ I had been a writer, a columnist for ‘Life’ magazine and for ‘Newsweek’ – that was about as high as you could get in column writing. I care about my writing. I’m not a quack-quack TV journalist.

I’m lucky enough to work with, I think, the greatest writer there’s ever been, Shakespeare. Whose collected works would always be under my pillow if I was only ever allowed one book to keep, and who never bores me.

The writers who reject tendentiousness and purpose in their work are the very ones who display it in every word they write. I could draw countless examples from the history of literature to show that the more a writer clamours for spiritual freedom, the more tendentious his work is liable to be.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.

An absolutely necessary part of a writer’s equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself.

I knew from the age of seven that I was meant to be a writer.

Good evening, ladies and gentleman. My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a producer. I am a director. I am a magician. I appear onstage and on the radio. Why are there so many of me and so few of you?

I’m first and foremost a writer. I followed my personal legend, my childhood dream of becoming a writer, but I can’t say why I’m one.

Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.

I learned that the only way you are going to get anywhere in life is to work hard at it. Whether you’re a musician, a writer, an athlete or a businessman, there is no getting around it. If you do, you’ll win – if you don’t, you won’t.

In journalism just one fact that is false prejudices the entire work. In contrast, in fiction one single fact that is true gives legitimacy to the entire work. That’s the only difference, and it lies in the commitment of the writer. A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe in it.

I never considered myself a writer. I’m a teacher. In a way, I feel kind of… kind of guilty for all the people who are writers who hope to be on the best-seller list someday, who live for that and don’t get it, and it came to me as a kind of free gift, like God coming to Abraham and announcing, ‘I’ve chosen you!’

I tried to get people at ‘South Park’ into ‘Downton Abbey,’ and it didn’t work. I think they were like, ‘Downton Abbey?’ What?’ And I kinda made a big plea in the writer’s room, like, ‘Guys, you should really watch it. It’s good. It’s addicting. My wife and I are obsessed with it.’