And if you want to know why great editors scare the pants off of writers everywhere, read ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’ by Lynne Truss. The punctuation police are everywhere!
Poetry is not Irish or any other nationality; and when writers such as Messrs. Clarke, Farren and the late F. R. Higgins pursue Irishness as a poetic end, they are merely exploiting incidental local colour.
I think the special thing about Python is that it’s a writers’ commune. The writers are in charge. The writers decide what the material is.
We make a contract within ourselves as actors or directors or writers about how much of ourselves we let into projects. You can actually figure out before you work on something how much blood you will have to let emotionally.
My book sales make ‘real writers’ possible.
Well, so far, at least, my own ideas always take priority over those of other writers. As long as the well doesn’t run dry, I imagine this will be the case.
Twitter is the most amazing medium for a comedy writer. I can’t get in every idea I want on the show no matter how hard I try to bully the other writers, so it’s a way of me getting out other comic ideas and immediately getting feedback.
When I was in college, I was the editor of the literary magazine and insisted neither the editors nor the writers be specifically identified-only our student numbers appeared on the title page. I love that idea and still do.
I think I’m also more open to other writers being present and listening to other opinions, whereas before I was going through my angsty teen years while making records.
I like terrific writing, but I also like a terrific story. My favorite books have both, and they’re by contemporary, commercial American writers.
There are many Latino writers as talented as I am, but because we are published through small presses, our books don’t count. We are still the illegal aliens of the literary world.
Many writers are radical. I am not, because of my age and because of my terrible fear of demagogy.
If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.
Writers are too neurotic to ever be happy.
Apart from a few simple principles, the sound and rhythm of English prose seem to me matters where both writers and readers should trust not so much to rules as to their ears.
Writers write. Dreamers talk about it.
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.
I’m definitely one of those actresses who comes to a set knowing how I want to do a scene, and I definitely love input from my directors and my writers.
One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers.
Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.
You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do – and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time.
Writers are stewards of the culture. Publishers, librarians, bookstore owners. We’re all in this together. To write books that are gripping, important, that people want to have, is to keep publishing alive.
Writers now are putting total faith in designers at Apple and Amazon. It’s almost like a race-car driver having no input into how cars are designed.
I think one of the reasons musicians keep doing what they do and writers keep doing what they do, is that we’re totally unsuited for anything else. And I for one am much too lazy.
Other writers, producers, and directors of low-budget films would often put down the film they were making, saying it was just something to make money with. I never felt that. If I took the assignment, I’d give it my best shot.
Our writers are full of cliches just as old barns are full of bats. There is obviously no rule about this, except that anything that you suspect of being a cliche undoubtedly is one and had better be removed.
I’ve had very close relationships with some twentieth-century writers.
Trump did not spring out of nowhere, and I was struck by how prescient writers like Alexis de Tocqueville and George Orwell and Hannah Arendt were about how those in power get to define what the truth is.
I do read P.D. James because she pays much more attention to character, to a particular atmosphere or setting. But most mystery writers, I think, are controlled by the plot.
Writers don’t make good spouses. When I am writing, I’m not a good wife. I shut myself away, and all my emotions are directed towards what I’m trying to write.
Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
But a lot of writers – and I’m one of them – do tend to feel dissatisfied. It makes you a little hard to live with, but it’s a goad and does keep you alert and restless.
Women writers have been told, forever, that our stories were not valuable. Not as valuable as men’s stories about wars, business, power.
The writers I respect the most had an undying commitment to a vision.
Since then, I have just read and read – but, that said, I suppose there is a raft of writers to whom I return again and again, not so much because I want to write like them, even if I were capable of it, but simply for a sort of stylistic shot in the arm.
Many writers secretly long to be performers. You always get the ‘if you weren’t a writer’ question. I would be a back-up singer, to stand in the back and go like ‘do, do, do.’
It feels amazing to work with writers that write really well.
Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.
Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.
It has been generally the custom of writers on natural history to take the habits and instincts of animals as the fixed point, and to consider their structure and organization as specially adapted to be in accordance with them.
The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues, and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.
Writers are a product of where we come from, but by looking at alternatives to the culture in which we live, we can find ways to change and hopefully improve it.
The writers want to know were you made your mistake, no how well your curve is breaking.
I think there are a lot more writers who are actors than you know; they just don’t have roles on famous TV shows that you recognize.
Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are.
The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers.
Many writers tend to write summing-up books at the end of their lives.
The so-called feminist writers were disgusted with me. I did my thing, and so I guess by feminist standards I’m a feminist. That suits me fine.
The group of writers I had grown up with in the ’60s – Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, James Simmons, John Hewitt, Paul Muldoon – formed a very necessary and self-sustaining group.
I think songwriters are more related to fiction writers. The Odyssey was a story in song. To me, that’s so beautiful, all those painted characters, all those travels and adventures.
Painters of paintings, writers of books, never could tell the half.
Writers rush in where publishers fear to tread and where translators fear to tread.
American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous.
I have no time to think about other writers. I am too busy with my own problems.
Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques.
My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms.
I grew up reading the ‘Village Voice’ and wanting to be one of these multidisciplinary music writers, film writers, book writers. And I lucked out getting a job at the ‘Voice’ right after college.
I look for strong people. I don’t like people who’ll say yes to everything I might bring up. I want people who can argue and disagree and have a point of view that’s reflected in the magazine. My dad believed in the cult of personality. He brought great writers and columnists to ‘The Standard.’
Throughout African-American literature, the writer has, in a sense, been burdened by the necessity of pleading the case for the whole race. For example, writers of slave narratives tend to lose their individual voices, as they were expected to stand in for all other voices, which were absent.
In fact, I think for a lot of writers, it’s so hard to be read.
Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
