Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

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"It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the "fronts" people assume before one another's eyes, and the "front" a writer puts on the face of reality"

Francoise Sagan, Playwright

"You have to have a strong title. It's got to say something"

Jim Capaldi, Musician

"That was par for the course but I also found that commissions were being canceled and in fact I considered this directly libelous - I write biographies for a living as well as being a journalist - for a non fiction book to be called fiction from beginning to end"

Anthony Holden, Journalist

"The influence of Paris, for instance, is now minimal. Yet a lot is written about Paris fashion"

Geoffrey Beene, Designer

"After that, I specifically started writing lyrics. I would like sweat and think and get it all together"

Jim Capaldi, Musician

"So on my screenplay, on the left-hand side of the page, I will put all the ideas that refer to the scene next to it, so I have some sort of pictorial reference"

Adrian Lyne, Director

"I had a feeling about Shakespeare's soliloquies, that there should be a real exchange between the actor and the audience"

Trevor Nunn, Director

"There used to be a category called women's fiction - meaning not too rude, not too much sex, a bit domestic and internal. Women have changed so much. We're so varied. And we've become more interested in the same varied experience in fiction"

Janet Fitch, Author

"I've always believed that a writer has got to remain an outsider"

Colin Wilson, Writer

"Isaiah Berlin once said that there are two kinds of writers, hedgehogs and foxes. He said the fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows just one thing. So Shakespeare is a typical fox; Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are typical hedgehogs. Now, I'm a typical hedgehog. I know just one thing, and I repeat it over and over again. I try to approach it from different angles to make it look different, but it's the same thing"

Colin Wilson, Writer

"It's true that I have spoken about doing a book before, but then everyone you speak to is planning to write a book"

Dylan Moran, Comedian

"People talk about escapism as though it's something nasty, but escapism is wonderful!"

Margaret Forster, Author

"Not too many people know who the editor is"

Julius Schwartz, Editor

"The situation of the Old Left was the theory of Socialist Realism, etc. It seemed pointless to argue. We stayed carefully away from people who wrote for the New Masses"

George Oppen, Poet

"Writing was like digging coal. I sweat blood. The spell is on me"

Zane Grey, Author

"No one connected intimately with a writer has any appreciation of his temperament, except to think him overdoing everything"

Zane Grey, Author

"Our reward for Starsky and Hutch was getting to write The Six Million Dollar Man for Todd"

Thomas Lennon, Actor

"The moment seemed right to me for a full and, if possible, authoritative portrait of the life and character of the Prince of Wales"

Jonathan Dimbleby, Writer

"I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking"

Christopher Isherwood, Author

"Human behavior in the midst of hardship caught my attention very early on, and my first stories were all pictures, no words"

Wally Lamb, Author

"I was always inventing characters and making up stories"

Suzanne Vega, Musician

"The thematic, psychological, and cultural concerns of a writer are more relevant than whatever literary mode he or she chooses to deal with in any given novel"

Norman Spinrad, Author

"As an actor, I go where the good writing is. That's the bottom line"

Glenn Close, Actress

"I believe people who are looking for a fresh idea and spirit have received Danielson. The conservative Christian press have been quite mean to us, but the mainstream "secular" press has been very, very nice"

Daniel Smith, Politician

"I wanted to write for Broadway"

Cynthia Weil, Musician

"Even when I think I'm writing really young, they say it's too mature"

Cynthia Weil, Musician

"I have never written anything in one draft, not even a grocery list, although I have heard from friends that this is actually possible"

Connie Willis, Writer

"Writers are in the entertainment business, and it gives me lots of pleasure to entertain my readers"

Brian Lumley, Writer

"Less really is more. It's a tendency of beginning writers to want to prove what they're talking about by going too far with description. I think you've got to keep it short, crisp and clean"

Brad Thor, Novelist

"News, news, news - that is what we want. You cannot beat news in a newspaper"

Arthur Christiansen, Journalist

"I'm publicizing the book that's done. I'm writing the book that's in the hopper, and I'm doing a little advance research on the book to come"

Ann Rule, Writer

"The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning"

A. B. Yehoshua, Novelist

"Vigorous writing is concise"

William Strunk, Jr., Writer

"I wanted the feel in these books to be like an epic fantasy, with kings, queens, dukes and court politics, but of course like what I was explaining before, about making the science make sense, you have to make the politics make sense, too"

Kevin J. Anderson, Author

"I didn't go out of my way to get into this movie stuff. I think of myself as a writer"

Sam Shepard, Playwright

"You can try to reach an audience, but you just write what comes out of you and you just hope that it is accepted. You do not write specifically to a generation"

Leon Uris, Writer

"I do not write for an audience"

Leon Uris, Writer

"Some literary types subscribe to the notion that being a writer like Salinger entitles a person to remain free of the standards that might apply to mere mortals"

Joyce Maynard, Writer

"If there is a special Hell for writers, it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works"

John Dos Passos, Novelist

"Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary in spite of everything"

Raymond Queneau, Poet

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