Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

Similar topics:Anime Art Games Movie Music Poetry

"Journalism is not just a cause, it's also a wacky profession"

David Talbot, Journalist

"I think we've broken story after story that the rest of the media refused to break even when they had the story because they were scared of the story, or they just didn't think it was appropriate"

David Talbot, Journalist

"I don't think Fox News or Rush Limbaugh need Clinton, it turns out. I think there's a hunger out there for - whether it's on the left or right - a more lively and provocative type of political journalism. I think Salon and Fox on the other side have both benefited from that"

David Talbot, Journalist

"Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?"

Joan Didion, Author

"Hemingway was really early. I probably started reading him when I was just eleven or twelve. There was just something magnetic to me in the arrangement of those sentences. Because they were so simple - or rather they appeared to be so simple, but they weren't"

Joan Didion, Author

"Of course, you always think about how it will be read. I always aim for a reading in one sitting"

Joan Didion, Author

"In Brentwood, we had a big safe-deposit box to put manuscripts in if we left town during fire season. It was such a big box that we never bothered to clean it out"

Joan Didion, Author

"Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power"

Joan Didion, Author

"Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing"

Joan Didion, Author

"When I'm working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm!"

Joan Didion, Author

"Once I get over maybe a hundred pages, I won't go back to page one, but I might go back to page fifty-five, or twenty, even. But then every once in a while I feel the need to go to page one again and start rewriting"

Joan Didion, Author

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

Joan Didion, Author

"My first thought when I came here was that I understood why there are so many great Irish writers - because there is something mystical in the air. There's always this cloudy, moody sky and it's challenging"

Christopher Meloni, Actor

"But I was, and still am, an avid reader and so, when I first started, I chose to photograph many of the great writers in this country to try and earn a living"

Fay Godwin, Photographer

"Readers always seem to think that the author has some control over the design of their books"

Donald Norman, Scientist

"The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers"

Joan Didion, Author

"Crime is one of the leads of the show. If there's ever anything that deals with a character's personal life, you don't have to worry about it getting too crazy. People don't have to worry about character arcs. Each episode is a self-contained unit"

Christopher Meloni, Actor

"What I have crossed out, I didn't like. What I haven't crossed out, I'm dissatisfied with"

Cecil B. DeMille, Producer

"I have the New York Daily News to thank for the jeans controversy"

Calvin Klein, Designer

"Was there ever such stuff as great as part of Shakespeare? Only one must not say so! But what think you? - What? - Is there not sad stuff? What? - What?"

George III, Royalty

"As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings"

Boris Pasternak, Novelist

"I want to write a book which is the history of comedy"

John Cleese, Actor

"I tend to have an odd split in my mind: I tend to look at it as a writer and when the writing thing is OK and I'm happy with it, then I put on my actor's hat"

John Cleese, Actor

"Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth"

Anatole Broyard, Critic

"The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from"

Gene Fowler, Journalist

"There are a lot of people who write very intensely about things they do not and cannot do"

Theodore Sturgeon, Writer

"What writing does is to reveal"

Rita Dove, Poet

"To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding"

Anatole Broyard, Critic

"In French literature, you can choose a la carte; in Spanish literature, there is only the set meal"

Jose Bergamin, Writer

"The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly"

Bernard Malamud, Novelist

"You must write to the people's expertise"

Theodore Sturgeon, Writer

"Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever"

Theodore Sturgeon, Writer

"I teach writing courses and first of all, I teach my students what prosody is"

Theodore Sturgeon, Writer

"I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers"

Rita Dove, Poet

"I had developed this habit of writing scenarios as a hobby. I would find out which stories had been sold to be made into films and I would write my own treatment and then compare it"

Satyajit Ray, Director

"Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions"

A. E. Housman, Poet

"Tolstoy may not be showing that much of Russia at that time even. It's hard to tell. You tend to associate the quality of the period with what's lasted - what's still good. And that quality becomes the whole period"

Donald Judd, Artist

"Writing is a communication"

Theodore Sturgeon, Writer

"The first writing I did was short short stories for a newspaper syndicate for which I was paid five dollars a piece on publication"

Theodore Sturgeon, Writer

"Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In order to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature"

Rita Dove, Poet

Page 35 of 130