Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

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"I've never sat down and thought about the difference between plot and theme. To me, that's never been important"

Len Wein, Cartoonist

"I had never really thought of myself as a writer; any writing I had done was just to give myself something to draw"

Len Wein, Cartoonist

"SF isn't a genre; SF is the matrix in which genres are embedded, and because the SF field is never going in any one direction at any one time, there is hardly a way to cut it off"

Larry Niven, Writer

"And every friend I've got has been writing Mars stories. It was pretty clear I'd never catch up"

Larry Niven, Writer

"While the spoken word can travel faster, you can't take it home in your hand. Only the written word can be absorbed wholly at the convenience of the reader!"

Kingman Brewster, Jr., Educator

"I am also working on a couple of short stories for anthologies. This is new to me and I'm enjoying it"

Judith Guest, Novelist

"On the other hand, at some level, the mass of unresolved issues in Northern Ireland does influence the fact that there are so many good writers in the place"

Paul Muldoon, Poet

"I think I started out trying to be very objective about the flow of the play"

James Rado, Actor

"Using a first-person narrator is simply a matter of hearing the voice inside yourself"

James Lee Burke, Author

"Never read bad stuff if you're an artist; it will impair your own game"

James Lee Burke, Author

"I wouldn't write anything autobiographical. If you've lived a life like Laurence of Arabia, it might be a consideration, but otherwise it's a little bit vain, it seems to me"

James Lee Burke, Author

"Even before he had one book published, Jack was one of those people you could feel was very special"

David Amram, Composer

"I was also in love with the English language"

Dick Schaap, Journalist

"I think my mistakes were kind of common - leaning on cliches and adjectives in the place of clear, vivid writing. But at least I knew how to spell, which seems to be a rarity these days"

Dick Schaap, Journalist

"I came up with new leads for game stories by being observant and clever, by using the many gifts of the English language to intrigue and hook a reader"

Dick Schaap, Journalist

"Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen"

Augusten Burroughs, Writer

"I don't think the English like me. I sold a colossal best seller in America, and they never really forgave me"

John Fowles, Writer

"You love all your characters, even the ridiculous ones. You have to on some level; they're your weird creations in some kind of way. I don't even know how you approach the process of conceiving the characters if in a sense you hated them. It's just absurd"

Joel Coen, Director

"I love to tell stories and this is my way of getting them down on paper"

Eli Wallach, Actor

"I guess there's a certain amount of poking fun at certain characters, but that's because there is something amusing about them or about the way they behave, so I guess you can say that that's poking fun at the character. But the character is your own invention, so who cares?"

Joel Coen, Director

"I guess everything having to do with your background has some influence on how you tell stories, but it's hard to parse how growing up in a Jewish community in Minnesota really affected it"

Joel Coen, Director

"Barton Fink got written very quickly, in about three weeks. I don't know what that means"

Joel Coen, Director

"An investigation may take six months. A quick interview, profile, a day"

Diane Sawyer, Journalist

"Sometimes some of these little side excursions are useful, and I manage to fit them in the book somewhere"

Jack Vance, Author

"I worked for half a cent a word. I'm not a fast writer to begin with, so for the first few years I had do other things"

Jack Vance, Author

"But Roy Rockwood, it was science fiction for the sake of science fiction"

Jack Vance, Author

"After working as a journalist, I went to a writing program at Johns Hopkins. It was interesting because it was neither journalistic nor historical, but it emphasized writing style, and afterwards I was asked to write my first book"

Iris Chang, Historian

"Unfortunately, there are writers whose only concern is how good they could make themselves look on a title"

Len Wein, Cartoonist

"The bottom line always remains the same: What is the basic humanity of the character? How do I make them resonate with the reader?"

Len Wein, Cartoonist

"I've always thought of myself as an organic writer, rather than a cerebral one. I feel my way along as I go, hoping I'll get to the place I intend to reach"

Len Wein, Cartoonist

"I've got five or six unpublished stories kicking around looking for somebody to buy them"

Larry Niven, Writer

"The newspaper fits the reader's program while the listener must fit the broadcaster's program"

Kingman Brewster, Jr., Educator

"I like to write in a shroud of secrecy because I have to keep finding ways to scare myself"

M. Night Shyamalan, Director

"I'd never been published when I was young"

Jack Vance, Author

"Your first duty as a writer is to write to please yourself. And you have no duty towards anyone else"

Iris Chang, Historian

"Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature"

Herman Hesse, Author

"One tends to overlook the fact that all during the 30's and actually during the late 40's, I was a highly successful writer, and a great many properties accumulated during that period of time"

L. Ron Hubbard, Author

"I cling to the fantasy that I could have done something more creative. Like actually writing a script, or writing a book. But the awful truth is that I... probably can't!"

Hugh Grant, Actor

"By the way, I understand that now you can have the Times delivered to your door here in the Twin Cities"

Harrison Salisbury, Journalist

"Today, there are more opportunities for writers in terms of access to larger success, but it's more difficult to publish a literary novel in the lower ranges. In other words, you almost have to hit a home run. You can hit a triple, maybe, but nobody's interested in a single"

James Lee Burke, Author

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