Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

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"Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place"

Margaret Haddix, Author

"I write a book over a period of months or years, and when I'm done with it, usually another year goes by before I see it in print. It's hard to be patient and wait"

Margaret Haddix, Author

"The point of my explanation is I'm very subjective when it comes to describing my characters: they are all a little bit a part of me from the outside in or the inside out - but to put your mind at ease, I built Paul Snider from the outside in"

Eric Roberts, Actor

"You need cliches. Cliches are what people respond to!"

Matthew Vaughn, Producer

"John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. And Harold Bloom, another former student"

M. H. Abrams, Critic

"I always wanted to be a writer"

Jung Chang, Writer

"I was born in Philadelphia and currently live in Minneapolis. I write for both children and adults!"

Kate DiCamillo, Author

"My writing style is very sensual, as in sensory detail"

Laurell K. Hamilton, Writer

"I'm more influenced by my own interests than anyone else's. Writers have to entertain themselves, or they can't entertain anyone else"

Laurell K. Hamilton, Writer

"Here's the secret to finishing that first book. Don't rewrite as you go!"

Laurell K. Hamilton, Writer

"This sort of encouragement is vital for any writer. And lastly the publication of Touching the Flame, which was on hold for two years and went through a few publishers before finding a stable home"

Paul Kane, Writer

"Sometimes I'll hear a phrase or a word and write it down in my little black notebook (a writer's best mate), then come back to it and work a plot around it"

Paul Kane, Writer

"For Mythology is the handmaid of literature; and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness"

Thomas Bulfinch, Writer

"If you write in category, you write knowing there's a framework, there are reader expectations"

Nora Roberts, Author

"I'd always loved to read - and come from a family of readers - but I never thought about writing as a career"

Nora Roberts, Author

"To the biographer, all lives bar none, are dramatic constructions"

Katharine Anthony, Writer

"My style has been pretty much like a newspaper. It's got politics in it, it's got media, sports, family relations, you know, all the sections you would expect, and wonderful religion things"

Kate Clinton, Comedian

"Whatever story you want to tell, tell it at the right size"

Richard Linklater, Director

"It was relatively easy to write 'The Cave of Lost Souls', though, because it came to me one night in a dream. I remember waking up and having this idea for a complete story - from start to finish - in my head, so I jotted it down, then later began writing the thing"

Paul Kane, Writer

"I've had a lot of very positive feedback about those stories, and seem to have struck upon something that most people feel. I can also tap dance, and don't know many other authors who can"

Paul Kane, Writer

"Jim Thompson understood something about the serial killer before the psychology caught up to it, which is that they are detached to it and they do want to get caught"

Val Kilmer, Actor

"Where radio is different than fiction is that even mediocre fiction needs purpose, a driving question"

Ira Glass, Journalist

"No, sometimes we just have to take liberties because the idea was so good. I wish we'd just gone with the idea that Patsy had been a man. It would have been fantastic"

Jennifer Saunders, Comedian

"The problem for me, still today, is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage"

Pete Townshend, Musician

"There's all this stuff that is happening in Edinburgh now, it's a sad attempt to create an Edinburgh society, similar to a London society, a highbrow literature celebrity society"

Irvine Welsh, Novelist

"I grew up in a place where everybody was a storyteller, but nobody wrote. It was that kind of Celtic, storytelling tradition: everybody would have a story at the pub or at parties, even at the clubs and raves"

Irvine Welsh, Novelist

"Louis Pasteur said, 'Chance favors the prepared mind.' If you're really engaged in the writing, you'll work yourself out of whatever jam you find yourself in"

Michael Chabon, Author

"One of my rules is: never explain. A writer is a lot like a magician, if you explain how the trick works, then a lot of the magic turns mundane"

Laurell K. Hamilton, Writer

"I started off like everyone else does, slogging but having a compulsion to put words on paper. I didn't write or read horror or fantasy, other than children's fantasy, until I was in my teens"

Laurell K. Hamilton, Writer

"I cannot say how strongly I object to people using other people's writing as research. Research is non-fiction, especially for horror, fantasy, science fiction. Do not take your research from other people's fiction. Just don't!"

Laurell K. Hamilton, Writer

"I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that's really it. In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing"

Kevin Smith, Director

"Some writers would be kinder than others, I'm sure. Hopefully they might describe my techniques as a mixture of tried and tested formulas - if it ain't broke don't fix it - and unexpected twists"

Paul Kane, Writer

"I don't believe for one moment you can write well what you wouldn't read for pleasure"

Nora Roberts, Author

"I do indeed write on the road. My laptop goes with me everywhere"

Nora Roberts, Author

"Every writer has to figure out what works best - and often has to select and discard different tools before they find the one that fits"

Nora Roberts, Author

"When I first started to get into writing, it was via music. I'd generate ideas for songs that would turn into stories, then they'd turn into novels. I was biased toward music"

Irvine Welsh, Novelist

"Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven't re-invented the process every time but I almost have"

Irvine Welsh, Novelist

"The only thing of value I have in this life is my ability to tell a story, whether in print, orating, writing it down, or having people acting it out. That's why I'm always hoping society never collapses because the first ones to go will be entertainers"

Kevin Smith, Director

"The themes Poe used were universal and timeless. As long as the English language exists at all, we will be able to appreciate what he did. It will not age! It will not become dated!"

John Astin, Actor

"I try and do 2,500 words a day, every day of the year"

Tom Holt, Novelist

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