I’ve discovered just how symbiotic the relationship is between writers, directors and actors. They ask the same questions and strip down texts in exactly the same way.
If you want to be a writer, don’t worry so much about writing. Read as much as you can. Read as many different writers as you can. Soak up the styles.
But with writers, there’s nothing wrong with melancholy. It’s an important color in writing.
Less really is more. It’s a tendency of beginning writers to want to prove what they’re talking about by going too far with description. I think you’ve got to keep it short, crisp and clean.
I would love to write more children’s books. There is such a high standard out there for children’s books; there are really amazing writers. It is a fantastic creative outlet and such an amazing teaching tool. The thing I love about kids, too, is it is so imaginative and poetic.
To reconstruct stories and scenes, nonfiction writers must conduct vigorous and responsible research. In fact, narrative requires more research than traditional reportage, for writers cannot simply tell what they learn and know; rather, they must show it.
I get really starstruck and tongue tied when I’m around other writers and the conversation tends not to go well.
I kind of thought the writers were starting to take Taylor and make her kind of down and dirty.
We are the only school in America, drama school in America that trains actors, writers and directors side by side for three years in a master’s degree program, and we want them – to expose them to everything.
The reason actors, artists, writers have agents is because we’ll do it for nothing. That’s a basic fact – you gotta do it.
One of the reasons I like Barthes more than other writers of that ilk is because he had a literary quality.
I find the songs I want to record by listening to as much music as I can. ‘When I hear things I really like, I ask the writers to send me a tape of everything they’ve ever written.
I go to a lot of writers conferences and literary festivals that tend to be in college towns or cities, and I’m eager to see what happens if those same texts and those same questions move outside of those areas to smaller rural communities where there are surely people who read and love poetry.
I wanted the press to become something of a movement. Not a movement committed to a particular ‘ism’, but a gathering together of writers with an aesthetic approach to literature and with a lust for excellence.
It’s not a bad thing for a writer not to feel at home. Writers – we’re much more comfortable at parties standing in the corner watching everybody else having a good time than we are mingling.
Writers write these male stereotypes, and it makes it ten times more interesting if a woman says the lines.
We do not have many intellectuals who can speak out for us internationally. We have no writers who are recognized, respected and loved outside the Arab world.
America is the big subject of the second half of the 20th century, tackled in one form or another by all the great American male writers. You could make a case for saying that it was the only game in town – from Bellow to Roth to Updike to Richard Ford – America was more or less explicitly the leitmotif.
There are few words in the music business or in art that I’ll say people or some writers are overgenerous with words like ‘legend’ or ‘genius’, ‘he’s a pioneer’ and all of that.
Science fiction writers put characters into a world with arbitrary rules and work out what happens.
I think what I would say to my younger self, and probably to younger, just starting-out writers is that a lot of times you’re just afraid to put yourself out there, and it’s uncomfortable because it’s working up the courage to do something, to push yourself to do those things.
I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.
What I always meant by that was that I do believe that a lot of directors, and writers, and sometimes producers just lose their edge because they haven’t seen anybody or talked to anybody or been with anybody who isn’t a kind of replica of themselves for a long period of time.
I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.
I think I’ll always be a better playwright than a pundit, but I believe that writers should be public intellectuals and that theater, even more than film, is a place of public debate.
My father, if anything, first and last, was a man of words. He loved stories; he didn’t live for stories, exactly, but I think he lived through stories. I think, like many writers, he loved stories about things he had experienced as much as, if not more than, he loved the experiences themselves.
What has been forgotten is that there were major intellectual breakthroughs in the 1960s, thanks to North American writers of an older generation. There was a rupture in continuity, since most young people influenced by those breakthroughs did not enter the professions.
I think most writers feel like they’re on the outside looking in much of the time. All of us feel, to a certain extent, alienated from the stuff going on around us.
I have always thought that writers come with any variety of attributes. Some are capable and some aren’t.
Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured.
The same issue is happening on a show like Everybody Loves Raymond now, which is in its eighth year and struggling to come up with good stories. It’ll be interesting to see how they do. The bottom line is, it starts with the writers and ends with the writers.
I think that most of the children’s writers live in the world that they’ve created, and their children are kind of phantoms that wander around the edge of it in the world, but actually the children’s writers are the children.
I don’t hate humanity and I’m not interested in people who do. Although, it’s funny, actually, some of my favorite writers really do. Like Martin Amis. My dirty secret. ‘London Fields’ is one of my favorite books ever. And it’s indefensible! But he’s so funny… I forgive him everything.
Even the ‘Negro’ shows like ‘Amos and Andy’ and ‘Beulah’ are written largely by white writers – the better to preserve the stereotypes, I imagine.
There are as many routes to writing success as there are writers who got there. My advice, however, applies across the board: read widely, learn the craft by whatever means you can – workshops and writing programs are ideal, but even self-study can work – apply what you learn, and persevere.
I think I’m inspired mostly by other artists that aren’t actors, like writers or singers or artists, for being so brave.
The greatest writers of this age… are aware of the mystery of our existence.
Pop science goes flying off in all kinds of fashionable directions, and it often drags a lot of SF writers with it. I’ve been led astray like that myself at times.
I’m quite sure that most writers would sustain real poetry if they could, but it takes devotion and talent.
Many fiction writers eventually want to feel that their work forms a single, unified entity.
I didn’t know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers.
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
We writers, as we work our way deeper into our craft, learn to drop more and more personal clues. Like burglars who secretly wish to be caught, we leave our fingerprints on broken locks, our voiceprints in bugged rooms, our footprints in the wet concrete.
When Ted Williams was here, inducted into the Hall of Fame 37 years ago, he said he must have earned it, because he didn’t win it because of his friendship with the writers. I guess in that way, I’m proud to be in this company that way.
I want to see the writers strike because the writers, god bless them, are the only true commies we have in Hollywood.
Some of the poetic writers who insert passages of realism in their texts have no underlying philosophy to uphold them, and revert to realism.
Live action writers will give you a structure, but who the hell is talking about structure? Animation is closer to jazz than some kind of classical stage structure.
Changes are required as far as scripts are concerned. People need to open up and experiment in story lines. But we don’t have good script writers, producers or directors. The Punjabi industry lacks cinema knowledge and professionalism. It is the saddest part.
My dream as a producer is to be able to build a company that can be a safe haven for artists, for directors and for writers and actors to do what they do best and let them have final edit. I’d like to build something to that effect.
There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.
Let’s face it, the great comedians now that are handicapped in the looks department are tremendous writers.
It’s funny. People often compare me to other humor essayists. They’re usually quite nice comparisons; I will accept those gladly. But I am always sort of appalled at the idea of being lumped with other, more chick-y female writers. And the truth is probably that neither comparison is accurate.
