Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

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"I did what most writers do when something happens that's overwhelming, fascinating, moving, all of that. I didn't know what else to do about it except write about it"

Patti Davis, Celebrity

"The most important thing is story-telling. It's as singular and old-fashioned as that"

David Soul, Actor

"I started writing seriously about 1960, at the fairly advanced age of 30"

Fred Saberhagen, Author

"I guess if one set of my books was selling like Stephen King's, and the other wasn't selling at all, editors would want me to do the ones that sold like Stephen King's. But they seem to be willing to let me pick what I want to do next"

Fred Saberhagen, Author

"My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it clear and interesting and compelling to me, then I hope maybe it will be for the reader"

David McCullough, Historian

"In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know"

David McCullough, Historian

"I love Dickens. I love the way he sets a scene"

David McCullough, Historian

"I discovered that in a story, I could safely dream any dream, hope any hope, go anywhere I pleased, any time I pleased, fight any foe, win or lose, live or die. My stories created a safe experimental learning place"

Donald Davis, Author

"They were kind of like little Stephen King stories... But these go back many hundreds of years"

Michael McKean, Actor

"Looking back, I understand that I was teaching myself to write"

Mary Wesley, Novelist

"To answer that I have to describe what I think is my responsibility as a thriller writer: To give my readers the most exciting roller coaster ride of a suspense story I can possibly think of"

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"In suspense novels, even subplots about relationships have to have conflict"

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"Ideally, I like to integrate the human issues into the suspense story itself"

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"I was editor of my high school literary magazine and a reporter for the school newspaper"

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"I spend about eight months researching and outlining my book"

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"The easy answer is that writing novels is a lot more fun than practicing law"

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques, you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say"

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"Certainly, going back to Sherlock Holmes, we have a tradition of forensic science featured in detective stories"

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"I think initially we wanted to use the first letter of the character's name. We thought S was perfect"

Joe Shuster, Artist

"The way that words fit together is always interesting to me. I love words!"

Joanna Newsom, Musician

"One would think that in writing about literary men and matters there would be no difficulty in finding a title for one's essay, or that any embarrassment which might arise would be from excess of material. I find this, however, far from being the case"

James Payn, Novelist

"If I take a less defensive tone, I'd admit that I couldn't write today a very jazzy, contemporary look at America as I did in 1979 in States of Desire"

Edmund White, Novelist

"I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block"

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"For years, I sort of would try to write a story that somehow fit the title. And I don't think it happened for maybe another four years that I actually thought of a story, the plot of a story that corresponded to that phrase"

Jhumpa Lahiri, Author

"Before I ever put anything on paper, Jerry and I would talk back and forth"

Joe Shuster, Artist

"In all highly civilised communities, Pretence is prominent, and sooner or later invades the regions of Literature"

James Payn, Novelist

"Nobody can give a good performance unless the authors and composers have written a good part, a fact which is often overlooked"

Judy Holliday, Actress

"I love to write. It's my first love"

Geddy Lee, Musician

"'The New York Times' list is a bunch of crap. They ought to call it the editor's choice. It sure isn't based on sales"

Howard Stern, Entertainer

"It is better, however, for his own reputation that the story-teller should risk a few actions for libel on account of these unfortunate coincidences than that he should adopt the melancholy device of using blanks or asterisks"

James Payn, Novelist

"Before Truman, journalism and non-fiction weren't taken very seriously"

Gerald Clarke, Politician

"Eventually the story would spill over into the regular media"

David Brock, Author

"Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare"

Frederick Henry Hedge, Clergyman

"I like stories that are not normal, everyday lives. I don't personally seek them out, but they find me"

Katherine Moennig, Actress

"The answer scrawled on a blank page in a daily newspaper, was conceived whilst aboard a ferry"

Harold Stephen Black, Inventor

"I invented the psychological histories and the relationship between Jack and Susan Stanton. I didn't know anything about the Clintons. I don't know more about the Clintons' marriage than you do"

Joe Klein, Journalist

"I've been taking longer to write stories lately"

Greg Egan, Scientist

"Australian SF book publishing has undergone a boom recently, and sometimes it's easier for new writers to sell a book to a local publisher first, which then makes a US edition more likely"

Greg Egan, Scientist

"He was interviewed in the early '60s by a young novelist, Pati Hill"

George Plimpton, Journalist

"I think some people wished I'd kept myself out of the book. But I kind of insist on it because I want the reader to share my engagement with the material, if you like, not pretend that I'm doing it completely intellectually"

Helen Garner, Novelist

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