Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

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"Suddenly the whole imagination of writing and editorial and newspaper and all these presumptions about who am I reading this, and who else other people may be, and all that, it's so grimly brutal!"

Robert Creeley, Poet

"I sort of try to write everything for me. I'm a huge sports fan but have no interest in minutiae. I don't remember who won Super Bowls five years ago or listen to sports talk radio. I'm trying to make sure the jokes are self-contained so they're accessible to everyone"

Norm MacDonald, Actor

"Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all"

Katherine Mansfield, Author

"I'm a writer first and a woman after"

Katherine Mansfield, Author

"My fiction is reviewed by the mainstream press, by science fiction periodicals, romance magazines, small press publications and various other journals, including some usually devoted to archaeological and other science material"

Jean M. Auel, Writer

"Life sometimes gets in the way of writing"

Jean M. Auel, Writer

"I have heard Science Fiction and Fantasy referred to as the fiction of ideas, and I like that definition, but it's the mainstream public that chooses my books for the most part"

Jean M. Auel, Writer

"I don't write for publishers, certainly not for critics, and not for readers, but I am delighted that so many people have found my books enjoyable and want to continue to read them"

Jean M. Auel, Writer

"I could write historical fiction, or science fiction, or a mystery, but since I find it fascinating to research the clues of some little know period and develop a story based on that, I will probably continue to do it"

Jean M. Auel, Writer

"There are writers who do start doing the same thing again and again and almost inevitably fall into self-parody"

Tobias Wolff, Writer

"Of course, it's why you want to become a writer - because you have the liberty to do that, but once you have the liberty you also have the obligation to do it"

Tobias Wolff, Writer

"Everything has to be pulling weight in a short story for it to be really of the first order"

Tobias Wolff, Writer

"I happen to think that American politics is one of the noblest arts of mankind; and I cannot do anything else but write about it"

Theodore White, Journalist

"Where words can be translated into equivalent words, the style of an original can be closely followed; but no translation which aims at being written in normal English can reproduce the style of Aristotle"

Gilbert Murray, Diplomat

"The pressure to be timely with news has increased every year"

Mary Hart, Entertainer

"But a lot of writers - and I'm one of them - do tend to feel dissatisfied. It makes you a little hard to live with, but it's a goad and does keep you alert and restless"

Tobias Wolff, Writer

"When we were first offered a book deal prior to Avon's, they were trying to get us to change it from the first-person story into a how-to book, and they were offering us some decent money. My agent told me, "You should really consider this""

Kenny Loggins, Musician

"It was still quite light out of doors, but inside, with the curtains drawn and the smouldering fire sending out a dim, uncertain glow, the room was full of deep shadows"

Kate Chopin, Author

"Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people"

Katherine Mansfield, Author

"I went to college, though I didn't take many writing courses"

Walter Jon Williams, Writer

"I can't speak for the other authors, but what I hoped to achieve was to illuminate certain corners of the Lucas universe that hadn't yet been explored"

Walter Jon Williams, Writer

"An SF author who reads only SF will have little new to contribute, but someone with a broader experience will bring more to the table"

Walter Jon Williams, Writer

"I'm in favor of any technology that makes my work available to the reading public at a reasonable price"

Walter Jon Williams, Writer

"I wanted to be an author for as long as I can remember"

Walter Jon Williams, Writer

"Being a writer was never a choice, it was an irresistible compulsion"

Walter Jon Williams, Writer

"Writing about dead white males seems to be out of favor among academics"

Ron Chernow, Author

"I used to get criticized for putting food in novels"

Jim Harrison, Writer

"I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that"

Jim Harrison, Writer

"The writers keep managing to turn the show in on itself, coming up with something that's well thought-out and miraculous"

Kiefer Sutherland, Actor

"The book is really, really dark, to the point where some people that I've talked to have said that it could be a series. And I'm like, Where? VH1? It's a little hard for VH1"

Nikki Sixx, Musician

"Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction"

John Cheever, Writer

"I'm a writer. Now I've started to be on television. I have a big mouth. And I have good TV teeth, they say"

Steven Cojocaru, Critic

"The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms"

James F. Cooper, Novelist

"Try to meet as many authors, agents, and editors as you can"

Walter Jon Williams, Writer

"The Rift, which was well over a thousand pages of manuscript, took two years"

Walter Jon Williams, Writer

"The big battle at the end of DW isn't drawn from history, but it's influenced by history, certainly"

Walter Jon Williams, Writer

"It's a tough job to tell a story when the audience already knows the ending, and the ending is bleak"

Walter Jon Williams, Writer

"Everything that you read is an influence on everything you write, and you want to draw as many elements into your work as you can"

Walter Jon Williams, Writer

"Even if you only want to write science fiction, you should also read mysteries, poetry, mainstream literature, history, biography, philosophy, and science"

Walter Jon Williams, Writer

"There were probably, what, 300 science-fiction members in the SFWA, of whom probably a hundred were active members in the sense that they were selling something every year, or every couple years"

Jerry Pournelle, Journalist

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