Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

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"Legends are material to be moulded, and not facts to be recorded"

Hervey Allen, Author

"Cliches and adjectives permeated my prose"

Dick Schaap, Journalist

"Each book first begins with a little idea"

Dick Bruna, Artist

"I tell my students you have an absolute right to write about people you know and love. You do. But the kicker is you have a responsibility to make the characters large enough that you will not have sinned against them"

Dorothy Allison, Writer

"You're doing it to make the character as specific as possible, so that it's a specific individual that you're talking about, not that whole class of people"

Joel Coen, Director

"The two most common charges against the older fiction, that it pleased wickedly and that it taught nothing, had broken down before the discovery, except in illiberal sects, that the novel is fitted both for honest use and for pleasure"

Carl Clinton Van Doren, Critic

"Familiar life, tending to sordidness, had been succeeded by remote life, generally idealized; historical detail had been brought in to teach readers who were being entertained"

Carl Clinton Van Doren, Critic

"I read some of my stories recently and thought, 'How in the hell did I get away with that?' I had some really raw cynicism in some of them"

Carl Barks, Artist

"Melville brought to the task a sound knowledge of actual whaling, much curious learning in the literature of the subject, and, above all, an imagination which worked with great power upon the facts of his own experience"

Carl Clinton Van Doren, Critic

"I've read somewhere that when you're writing, you should stop while you're doing well, so you always want to go back to work"

Glenn Frey, Musician

"Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning"

Dorothy Allison, Writer

"My writing improved the more I wrote - and the more I read good writing, from Shakespeare on down"

Dick Schaap, Journalist

"I have not thought too much about the psychology or life of the character Jonas in some time"

Corin Nemec, Actor

"The only way to do news on television is not to be terrified of it"

David Brinkley, Journalist

"There was a writer in the '20s called Christopher Morley, who I remember a little bit of, who had some influence on me, but I couldn't tell you what it was"

Jack Vance, Author

"The story was such that I couldn't make a graceful ending and then make a graceful new beginning. I could have, but I didn't want to. So, it isn't the most graceful way of writing a story. This new story is, I think, is pretty good stuff. I'm pleased with it anyway"

Jack Vance, Author

"I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell"

Jack Vance, Author

"A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone's written the story. He's supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment"

Jack Vance, Author

"When you take something extremely broad, then it is not a work of expansion or work of compression. It's hard because you have to decide what to throw out"

Iris Chang, Historian

"Yes, it's hard to write, but it's harder not to"

Carl Clinton Van Doren, Critic

"But I don't sit down and think: this is meant for children"

Dick Bruna, Artist

"They take journalism really seriously because they know the force that it is and can be"

Christiane Amanpour, Journalist

"And I believe that good journalism, good television, can make our world a better place"

Christiane Amanpour, Journalist

"I was a very observant child. The boys in my books are based on boys in my neighborhood growing up!"

Beverly Cleary, Author

"Now I say I'm a diarist with an explanation I'll get back to you on. Someday I may try and write in memoir form"

Carrie Fisher, Actress

"Because if we, the storytellers, don't do this, then the bad people will win"

Christiane Amanpour, Journalist

"Writing is hard work, but a lot of fun, too. It allows me to live out some of my fantasies"

Christopher Darden, Lawyer

"The joke that I make is that there are instances on the TV series that happen to me, - except on Sex and the City, they always make it better or worse than real life and I am actually saying that in a joking way"

Candace Bushnell, Writer

"The '90s are really the 'Sex and the City' woman, and I think, right now, the new contemporary woman is the 'Lipstick Jungle' woman"

Candace Bushnell, Writer

"There was no difference between my characters and the life my readers were going to have to face"

Carl Barks, Artist

"I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity"

Brian Aldiss, Writer

"I don't necessarily start with the beginning of the book. I just start with the part of the story that's most vivid in my imagination and work forward and backward from there"

Beverly Cleary, Author

"I pitched a storyline, and as far as I know it's been picked up. It's for the third and final episode I'm contracted to do. But I can't give any spoilers"

Corin Nemec, Actor

"Science fiction is no more written for scientists that ghost stories are written for ghosts"

Brian Aldiss, Writer

"I have a liberal definition of news because I think news can be what excites people. I'm not very sanctimonious about what news is and isn't"

Diane Sawyer, Journalist

"Every time somebody tries to go in and reinvent what we do, it always ends up being more about technology and sets, and flash and dash, forgetting the main thing, which is interesting people saying interesting, important things"

Diane Sawyer, Journalist

"I may attempt a novel. I think that no matter what you write, it requires being honest with oneself, and you have to pull yourself out of the whirlwind of daily life"

Iris Chang, Historian

"I am lucky enough to have Aaron Sorkin write what I have to say"

Allison Janney, Actress

"It is not Kafka's fault that his wonderful writings have lately turned into a fad, and are read by people who have neither the ability nor the desire to absorb literature"

Herman Hesse, Author

"In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well"

Alain de Botton, Writer

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