Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

Similar topics:Anime Art Games Movie Music Poetry

"A non-fiction writer pretty much has the shape of the figure in front of him or her and goes about refining it. A work of non-fiction is not as difficult to write as a work of fiction, but it's not as satisfying in the end"

Chaim Potok, Author

"I always thought it hadn't influenced me very much, but I heard from many people from England that many motives from German fairytales are to be found in my books"

Cornelia Funke, Author

"But if I really want to produce my own work and tell stories, then I will"

Bill Sienkiewicz, Artist

"Writing a novel is like making love, but it's also like having a tooth pulled. Pleasure and pain. Sometimes it's like making love while having a tooth pulled"

Dean Koontz, Author

"The only reason I would write a sequel is if I were struck by an idea that I felt to be equal to the original. Too many sequels diminish the original"

Dean Koontz, Author

"Television theatre, as is implied in its name, should rely on adaptations of scripts written for the theatre"

Andrzej Wajda, Director

"Every book has some real life in it. I was never pursued by an evil twin clone, but everything else in Mr. Murder was pretty much out of my own life"

Dean Koontz, Author

"I think it would be fun to write about movies again"

Bill Condon, Director

"If someone wrote it and it had a peculiar twist, I've read it"

Dean Koontz, Author

"I love the written word so much, I know it's gonna flow naturally"

Alicia Keys, Musician

"Ibsen was Norwegian by birth, but universal in spirit"

Liv Ullmann, Actress

"Grant me some wild expressions, Heavens, or I shall burst"

George Farquhar, Dramatist

"I'd never have written the big books in London"

Jilly Cooper, Author

"I was so flattered that someone wanted me to write a book, I said I would. It was published in 1969"

Jilly Cooper, Author

"But I always seem to finish a book and then think, oh God, I've got to pay a tax bill, so I'd better write a novel, so I tend not to stop and learn word processing"

Jilly Cooper, Author

"My first character was Mr. Toad"

Bill Griffith, Cartoonist

"I'm not sure why writing for others became harder. Probably a reluctance to give away anything you might conceivably use yourself caused a block. I did it, but it remained hard when it had once been easy"

Dick Cavett, Entertainer

"I think I'd be pretty easy to write for"

Dick Cavett, Entertainer

"If something is going on in my life, it winds up getting into my strip"

Bill Griffith, Cartoonist

"Everyone says how Calvin and Hobbes is about a real kid, to me there's nothing real about it; it's an adult using a kid's body as a mouthpiece"

Bill Griffith, Cartoonist

"Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said"

Jean Rostand, Scientist

"I'm working on a nonfiction book on Nepal and a novel about diasporas"

Louise Brown, Celebrity

"I bought a selection of short, romantic fiction novels, studied them, decided that I had found a formula and then wrote a book that I figured was the perfect story. Thank goodness it was rejected"

Louise Brown, Celebrity

"Don't write the book you think publishers want to commission. Plenty of other writers will be doing the same thing"

Louise Brown, Celebrity

"You're under pressure when you produce facts. You're working with facts in journalism, but you're under all kinds of formal constraints; there are expectations"

Denis Johnson, Writer

"What's funny about Jesus' Son is that I never even wrote that book, I just wrote it down. I would tell these stories and people would say, 'You should write these things down'"

Denis Johnson, Writer

"In the plays - that's where I go crazy. But my prose has a much lighter touch; it's not trying to thrill with language, just to be more truthful. I'm not concerned with the accuracy of anything. We don't get to the truth of anything with facts"

Denis Johnson, Writer

"I was probably 35 when I wrote the first story. The voice is kind of a mix in that it has a young voice, but it's also someone who's looking back. I like that kind of double vision"

Denis Johnson, Writer

"I think it's silly for anyone to think you could write under the influence, but if they'd like to think that, I'd like to keep the legend alive. Maybe I was under the influence when I wrote Jesus' Son and I just didn't know it"

Denis Johnson, Writer

"I really enjoy writing novels. It's like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off!"

Denis Johnson, Writer

"In Algeria, I had begun to get into literature and philosophy. I dreamed of writing-and already models were instructing the dream, a certain language governed it"

Jacques Derrida, Philosopher

"I do not believe in pure idioms. I think there is naturally a desire, for whoever speaks or writes, to sign in an idiomatic, irreplaceable manner"

Jacques Derrida, Philosopher

"My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head"

S. E. Hinton, Writer

"Normally, I name my characters after famous comedians"

Paula Danziger, Author

"If you are a writer, you locate yourself behind a wall of silence, and no matter what you are doing, driving a car, or walking, or doing housework, you can still be writing, because you have that space"

Joyce Carol Oates, Novelist

"Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they are in. It is a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters"

Elizabeth George, Author

"The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist"

Wole Soyinka, Dramatist

"I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident"

Wole Soyinka, Dramatist

"When I was in college, I was the editor of the literary magazine and insisted neither the editors nor the writers be specifically identified-only our student numbers appeared on the title page. I love that idea and still do"

Jonathan Carroll, Author

"Shakespeare is the outstanding example of how that can be done. In all of Shakespeare's plays, no matter what tragic events occur, no matter what rises and falls, we return to stability in the end"

Charlton Heston, Actor

Page 47 of 130