Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

Similar topics:Anime Art Games Movie Music Poetry

"I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until 'The End.'"

Lee Child, Writer

"With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his tracks in the war. When I got there, there was a certain satisfaction in finding I had it right - it does look like that"

David McCullough, Historian

"I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word - for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals"

David McCullough, Historian

"Seventy percent of what I write, I throw out. I can write very easily, but writing original things is the hard bit"

Mike Rutherford, Musician

"I want to be an animated character. I'm also doing more writing and directing"

Illeana Douglas, Actress

"You can also make explicit certain social problems which, again, would be prejudged or not encountered at all in real life, because people have set up defenses against it. Fantasy allows you to get past defenses"

Elizabeth Moon, Author

"So I work hard to present the human side of my characters, while not neglecting the plot"

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"Rule one: Write about settings you're familiar with"

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories"

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don't populate them with characters that readers can care about"

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"It's hard to hold the focus that strongly on a single character for that long"

Elizabeth Moon, Author

"I was writing fiction, but not finishing fiction"

Elizabeth Moon, Author

"I actually feel that the different kinds of stories come out of different parts of my brain"

Elizabeth Moon, Author

"For me, the big chore is always the same: how to begin a sentence, how to continue it, how to complete it"

Claude Simon, Writer

"The Swords were still interesting, but by then a cast of characters had started to appear and go on from book to book, and other things about the world began to feel constricting. And there were other things I wanted to do, so I closed the series up and stopped it"

Fred Saberhagen, Author

"More immediately, I'm currently working on another Dracula in which there will be connections with ancient Egypt. That's about as far as I want to go in commenting on current work!"

Fred Saberhagen, Author

"I wrote speculative fiction because I loved to read it, and thought I could do better than some of the people who were getting published"

Fred Saberhagen, Author

"I suspect that writer's block afflicts mainly people who have some stable and ample source of income outside of writing. So far it hasn't been a problem"

Fred Saberhagen, Author

"When the venture has been made of dealing with historical events and characters, it always seems fair towards the reader to avow what liberties have been taken, and how much of the sketch is founded on history"

Charlotte Mary Yonge, Novelist

"Animals are stylized characters in a kind of old saga - stylized because even the most acute of them have little leeway as they play out their parts"

Edward Hoagland, Author

"I just have to proceed as usual. No matter what happens, nothing helps with the writing of the next book,"

Frank McCourt, Author

"Capote wrote every day. He said: that's the only way, you have to sit down every day and do it"

Debbie Harry, Musician

"I'm drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist"

David McCullough, Historian

"I am always trying to write"

Joanna Newsom, Musician

"You know, since the reviews have come out and people have reacted to it, I've realized that is in a sense what has happened. But as I was writing them, I didn't feel a part of any tradition. I think that would have been too overwhelming, in a sense"

Jhumpa Lahiri, Author

"When you're writing about people that are not very well off, you seem to see the kitchen sink. So it was a bit of a sort of cosy phrase that got used a bit too much"

Timothy West, Actor

"I don't think anything you've written is immortal, as yet"

Terence Young, Director

"I can't tell you exactly how I found it. It was just a process of writing a lot of stories and reading a lot of stories that I admired and just working and working until the sentences sounded right and I was satisfied with them"

Jhumpa Lahiri, Author

"In a novel, I could submerge my ego in a character's and let his perceptions take over"

Elizabeth Moon, Author

"Writing doesn't come easily to me. It gets more and more difficult!"

Elizabeth David, Writer

"I do not write by any set time schedule. I realize there are many writers who follow a daily regime where they arise at 6:00 a.m., do some sort of exercise, eat breakfast and then sit down and produce words for a three to four hour period"

Donald McKay, Designer

"The fate of the singers who, like my songs, went up in flame was also the fate of the books which I later wrote. All of them went up in flame to Heaven in a fire which broke out one night at my home in Bad Homburg as I lay ill in a hospital"

Shmuel Y. Agnon, Writer

"Some of those stories in local newspapers are just as dull and boring as the stories that I get from on-line services, which are basically sort of straight news"

Tabitha Soren, Celebrity

"There are, it is true, at present no great prizes in literature such as are offered by the learned professions, but there are quite as many small ones - competences; while, on the other hand, it is not so much of a lottery"

James Payn, Novelist

"It's always a mistake for writers to key their submissions to world events, because they move so quickly and unpredictably, as has certainly proven the case in Afghanistan"

Richard Curtis, Writer

"Great writers arrive among us like new diseases threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible"

Craig Raine, Poet

"The darker the character, the more interesting"

Robert Carlyle, Director

"Writing Part of the Scenery has been a very different experience. I have been reminded of people and events, real and imaginary, which have been part of my life. This book is a celebration of the land which means so much to me"

Mary Wesley, Novelist

"I never really know the title of a book until it's finished"

Mary Wesley, Novelist

"Young writers only take off when they find their subjects. Since almost everyone has a family and stories about family, that is often a place to start"

Robert Morgan, Soldier

Page 123 of 130