Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

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"Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"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"

Penelope Lively, Author

"It was a combination of an intense interest in children's literature, which I've always had, and the feeling that I'd just have a go and see if I could do it"

Penelope Lively, Author

"I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation"

Penelope Lively, Author

"It's been a fascinating thing because we didn't really know how to write when we started South Park at all. It's been like, we've just sort of grown up a bit and it's amazing to just see how, if you take Butters and Cartman and put them in any scene, it works"

Trey Parker, Artist

"There may be a point where I may decide to write an autobiography"

Pamela Stephenson, Actress

"The research is the easiest. The outline is the most fun. The first draft is the hardest, because every word of the outline has to be fleshed out. The rewrite is very satisfying"

Ken Follett, Author

"For success, the author must make the reader care about the destiny of the principals, and sustain this anxiety, or suspense, for about 100,000 words"

Ken Follett, Author

"The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero"

Mary McCarthy, Author

"Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"The romantic idea is that everybody around a writer must suffer for his talent. I think a writer is a citizen of humanity, part of his nation, part of his family. He may have to make some compromises"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"A writer has to live with a sense of honor"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"I don't want anything to do with anything mechanical between me and the paper, including a typewriter, and I don't even want a fountain pen between me and the paper"

Shelby Foote, Author

"I think you have an obligation to share what you know as a writer"

David Guterson, Author

"Just about any story we think about doing, whether we've read it in a newspaper, heard it on the radio or come upon it through word of mouth - by the time you get there, every other network, cable station and talk show is already racing to the scene"

Connie Chung, Journalist

"I think the people who would be the least interested in my work would be people who read lots of comic books"

Harvey Pekar, Writer

"I'm an immigrant and I've always wanted to write something about America"

Peter Jennings, Journalist

"Heart is what drives us and determines our fate. That is what I need for my characters in my books: a passionate heart. I need mavericks, dissidents, adventurers, outsiders and rebels who ask questions, bend the rules, and take risks"

Isabel Allende, Writer

"All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom"

Isabel Allende, Writer

"Even though I may not intend it when I set out to write the book, these places just emerge as major players in what I'm doing, almost as if they are insisting on it"

David Guterson, Author

"It is an ancient need to be told stories. But the story needs a great storyteller. Thanks for all of it, Jo"

Alan Rickman, Actor

"It seemed to me you could do anything in comics. So I started doing my thing, which is mainly influenced by novelists, stand-up comedians, that sort of thing"

Harvey Pekar, Writer

"And I plan to write a sequel to Dragon Rider"

Cornelia Funke, Author

"And I always read the English translation and always have conversations with my translator, for example about the names. I always have to approve it"

Cornelia Funke, Author

"The future of publishing lies with the small and medium-sized presses, because the big publishers in New York are all part of huge conglomerates"

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Poet

"If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the novel? A novel is a kind of exploration and discovery, for me at any rate"

Chaim Potok, Author

"I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of people close to them or lives they have heard about as the raw material for their creativity"

Chaim Potok, Author

"Acting is playing - it's actually going out on a playground with the other kids and being in the game, and I need that. Writing satisfies that part of myself that longs to sit in my room and dream"

Billy Bob Thornton, Actor

"Do the story in the way it really demands to be done, which may mean using several different styles or only one style; but it's still about respecting the story"

Bill Sienkiewicz, Artist

"Readers will stay with an author, no matter what the variations in style and genre, as long as they get that sense of story, of character, of empathetic involvement"

Dean Koontz, Author

"I've got a long list of books I wish I'd never written-and I've kept them all out of print for the past 20 years"

Dean Koontz, Author

"I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing"

Dean Koontz, Author

"Although I've said a million times that I'm not a horror writer, I do like horror"

Dean Koontz, Author

"The difficulty of writing a good theatre play set in new reality was even greater given that the level of similitude to life that is allowed in a film would not work on the stage"

Andrzej Wajda, Director

"Each work seems to give me the most trouble at the time I'm working on it"

Chaim Potok, Author

"Some days I'm lucky to squeeze out a page of copy that pleases me, but I get as many as six or seven pages on a very good day; the average is probably three pages"

Dean Koontz, Author

"In my books, I never portray violence as a reasonable solution to a problem. If the lead characters in the story are driven to it, it's at the extreme end of their experience"

Dean Koontz, Author

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