Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

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"All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them"

Isak Dinesen, Writer

"We tend to look through language and not realize how much power language has"

Deborah Tannen, Sociologist

Deborah Tannen

"A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language"

Gaston Bachelard, Philosopher

"It's all storytelling, you know. That's what journalism is all about"

Tom Brokaw, Journalist

"Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go"

E. L. Doctorow, Author

"I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and hope that no one runs away"

Mark Haddon, Novelist

"When a writer knows home in his heart, his heart must remain subtly apart from it"

Willie Morris, Writer

"I don't think there's any great mystery to writing female characters, so long as you talk to them. If you lived in a monastery and never met any women, maybe it would be difficult"

Ken Follett, Author

"I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any"

Jean Rhys, Novelist

"All the ancient classic fairy tales have always been scary and dark"

Helena Bonham Carter, Actress

"My assignment is what every writer's assignment is: tell the truth of his own time"

Leslie Fiedler, Critic

"I also believe that writing becomes worthwhile and vitalized only through a full and exciting life"

Esther Forbes, Author

"Write what you feel. Write because of that need for expression"

Dorothy Fields, Musician

Dorothy Fields

"Fiction's about what it is to be a human being"

David Foster Wallace, Writer

David Foster Wallace

"To provoke dreams of terror in the slumber of prosperity has become the moral duty of literature"

Ernst Fischer, Writer

"I loved the world of imagination"

R. A. Salvatore, Author

R. A. Salvatore

"And I'm working at trying to find a kind of language where I won't be so easily modulated by expectation"

Kathy Acker, Activist

"The pattern of the narrative never of necessity wants to end, it never has to"

Robert Creeley, Poet

"The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps"

Jim Harrison, Writer

"Genre labels are useful only insofar as they help you find an audience"

Walter Jon Williams, Writer

"There's a joy in writing short stories, a wonderful sense of reward when you pull certain things off"

Tobias Wolff, Writer

"Simple and to the point is always the best way to get your point across"

Guy Kawasaki, Businessman

"I loved to read when I was a kid, and as soon as I realized that an actual person got to make up the books I loved so much, I decided that that was the job for me"

Margaret Haddix, Author

Margaret Haddix

"The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition"

Marilyn Hacker, Poet

"I'm not constrained by being a genre writer. Any story I can imagine, I can cast as a fantasy novel and probably get it published"

Lynn Abbey, Author

"You treat characters like people you meet in life-friends or mentors"

Wes Bentley, Actor

Wes Bentley

"It's a matter of style. The Evan Hunter style and the Ed McBain style are very, very different"

Evan Hunter, Author

"Literature is about as unnecessarily necessarily as tableware or ironed shirts"

Peter Bichsel, Writer

Peter Bichsel

"The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming, although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you"

Robert Stone, Novelist

"Its language is as bare as a monk's cell, and as uninviting"

Clifford Longley, Journalist

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written"

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

Oscar Wilde

"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means"

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

Oscar Wilde

"Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another"

Voltaire, Writer

Voltaire

"The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all"

Winston Churchill, Statesman

Winston Churchill

"Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all"

Winston Churchill, Statesman

Winston Churchill

"Words are all we have"

Samuel Beckett, Playwright

Samuel Beckett

"When asked, 'How do you write?' I invariably answer, 'one word at a time'"

Stephen King, Author

Stephen King

"I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark"

Henry David Thoreau, Author

Henry David Thoreau

"If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad"

Lord Byron, Poet

Lord Byron

"The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all"

James A. Baldwin, Author

James A. Baldwin

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