Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

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"I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"I think it's a question which particularly arises over women writers: whether it's better to have a happy life or a good supply of tragic plots"

Wendy Cope, Poet

"I have a certain pool of subject matter that I like to write about, things that interest me: politics, religion, ecology, and relationships between men and women. And that's usually what I focus on"

Don Henley, Musician

"My favorite period is World War II, and I'm in the middle of writing my fourth novel set in that era"

Ken Follett, Author

"Most of my stories have some basis in fact"

Ken Follett, Author

"I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn't happen, but it might have"

Ken Follett, Author

"I rather like getting away from fiction"

Penelope Lively, Author

"I'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction"

Penelope Lively, Author

"I try to write conversationally; I try to write like people speak and put the emphasis on the right syllable"

Don Henley, Musician

"The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - but astonish"

Terry Southern, Writer

"If a reporter doesn't like the person he's writing about, it shows up in his article"

Willie Stargell, Athlete

"I like writing a lot more than I used to. I used to find it scary but now I've got used to it, once it gets going. I used to find it hard to start. Fear of the blank page. The first thing you write down won't bear any relation to what's in your head and that's always disappointing"

Victoria Wood, Comedian

"Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life"

Eudora Welty, Author

"To imagine yourself inside another person... is what a storywriter does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose"

Eudora Welty, Author

"I view myself primarily as a trial lawyer who happens to be writing, as opposed to a writer who happens to be a trial lawyer, so the audience is like a jury to me"

Vincent Bugliosi, Author

"I do not pretend to write much of a letter. You know under what circumstances I am writing"

Joshua Chamberlain, Soldier

"When I'm writing a woman character, I don't think, 'What would a woman do?' I just think, 'What would this character do in this situation?'"

Ken Follett, Author

"We all now tell stories by cutting from one dramatic scene to the next, whereas Victorian novelists felt free to write long passages of undramatic summary"

Ken Follett, Author

"In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"I never show anything to anybody until I've finished it"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"I try to get to those peculiar and particular things that you never think of to say"

Carly Simon, Musician

"I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children"

Penelope Lively, Author

"I look at the story, I look at the idea, and just try to think of it in terms of that whole body of myth, and see where the characters fit in and what they ought to be doing-all those archetypes are there to play with"

John Boorman, Director

"Writing on a contract for a major studio, you get the very best"

Terry Southern, Writer

"I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes, which might even be contradictory"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"I am an artist and have no right buggering about with verbs and split infinitives, which is what being a writer says to me"

Ralph Steadman, Cartoonist

"I've never shown anybody a draft of anything"

Shelby Foote, Author

"I think that everything you do helps you to write if you're a writer. Adversity and success both contribute largely to making you what you are. If you don't experience either one of those, you're being deprived of something"

Shelby Foote, Author

"Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me"

David Guterson, Author

"I didn't want it to be a book that made pronouncements"

Penelope Lively, Author

"Conventional forms of narrative allow for different points of view, but for this book I wanted a structure whereby each of the main characters contributed a distinctive version of the story"

Penelope Lively, Author

"All I know for certain is that reading is of the most intense importance to me; if I were not able to read, to revisit old favorites and experiment with names new to me, I would be starved - probably too starved to go on writing myself"

Penelope Lively, Author

"You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

"Hunter and I never got proper journalistic accreditation to go anywhere. Nobody was giving us passes to go in here or there. We always had to somehow talk our way in"

Ralph Steadman, Cartoonist

"I used to write sonnets and various things, and moved from there into writing prose, which, incidentally, is a lot more interesting than poetry, including the rhythms of prose"

Shelby Foote, Author

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