Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

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"I thought I'd definitely be a writer, whatever I did"

Thomas Keneally, Novelist

"What's the challenge in writing a novel that few people will read? I'm more than happy writing what I do, and have no plans to change that"

Nicholas Sparks, Author

"I suppose more than anything, it's the way of life in this part of the country that influences my writing. In Eastern North Carolina, with the exception of Wilmington, most people live in small towns"

Nicholas Sparks, Author

"The nearest we have to a Henry James or an Edith Wharton of the East Coast's Wasp upper classes"

Charlotte Curtis, Journalist

"I don't like writing essays or theory"

Adrian Mitchell, Poet

"In writing a series of stories about the same characters, plan the whole series in advance in some detail, to avoid contradictions and inconsistencies"

L. Sprague de Camp, Author

"If you re-read your work, you can find, on re-reading, a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing"

William Safire, Author

"There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair"

Haruki Murakami, Writer

"All my books were easy to write - doesn't it show?"

Daniel Pinkwater, Author

"If you ask questions that interest you, you'll get answers that interest your audience"

Kurt Loder, Journalist

"With any work worth its salt, you have to trust the author enough to take its measure. And if you apply too many preconceptions, you are not taking its measure"

Art Spiegelman, Artist

"The Butcher Boy is a very great novel indeed and a very important Irish novel. The ambiguity of that is he's writing a book about an appalling situation and he does it in a hilarious way"

Stephen Rea, Actor

"I do enjoy working with writers"

Neil Jordan, Director

"As the books grew bigger and more ambitious, the situations in question sometimes became political ones, and so it became necessary to start painting in the social background on a scale which eventually became panoramic"

Jonathan Coe, Novelist

"See, I have no journalism in my background, so I wasn't practised at research or writing non-fiction, nor at handling the truth in a journalistic way. Journalists know when to call a halt and write something, but I kept on looking for answers"

John Sladek, Author

"There's no reason you should write any novel quickly"

John Irving, Novelist

"And I find - I'm 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any. That's the necessary part of being a writer, you better like being alone"

John Irving, Novelist

"It is grievous to read the papers in most respects, I agree. More and more I skim the headlines only, for one can be sure what is carried beneath them quite automatically, if one has long been a reader of the press journalism"

Mary Ritter Beard, Historian

"Most of the press is sent to my publicist, so I do see most of what is written about me"

Sela Ward, Actress

"Writing is always personal in some way, but not always in a direct way"

Suzanne Vega, Musician

"I'm not very interested in charting a day-to-day familiar reality. I'm always looking for territory in which to explore the BIG subjects, the life-or-death stories"

Rose Tremain, Novelist

"I can inhabit any character in a way that is difficult to do successfully in a contemporary novel"

Rose Tremain, Novelist

"A novel usually takes me two years. A year to research and plan and dream. Then a year to write"

Rose Tremain, Novelist

"I like to write about things about which I have no answers, questions that trouble me. These things trouble me"

Paul Haggis, Director

"I get work because I'm primarily a novelist, but I've become script doctor. I can work back and forth between French and English"

Norman Spinrad, Author

"The trick is the paradox - turning your story inside out. Now, if it is something that appears to be of total normality, and then suddenly turns inside out and is a different thing all together, then that's fun to write"

Nigel Kneale, Writer

"I wanted to write a story that demanded the viewer's attention"

Nigel Kneale, Writer

"One effect that the Nobel Prize seems to have had is that more Arabic literary works have been translated into other languages"

Naguib Mahfouz, Novelist

"It is simply not part of my culture to preserve notes. I have never heard of a writer preserving his early drafts"

Naguib Mahfouz, Novelist

"I have tried to explore the little talent I have for writing"

Cyril Cusack, Actor

"There is the great creative part of it. The writing is the best part"

Cynthia Weil, Musician

"If I had killed Crow off, I can think of least six novels I would never have written, 400,000 words' worth of very necessary experience"

Brian Lumley, Writer

"But there's a little guy who sits astride my brain with a whip, and if I'm away from the machine for more than a couple of hours during the day, this little guy's lashing away"

Brian Lumley, Writer

"Most of my books have been written in the form of fantasy"

Lloyd Alexander, Writer

"I think now I'm up to something like 85 different titles that I've published"

Kevin J. Anderson, Author

"I don't think the author should make the reader do that much work to remember who somebody is"

Kevin J. Anderson, Author

"Every spare second I would write, somehow. On my lunch hour, too"

Kevin J. Anderson, Author

"To hurry through the rise and fall of a fine, full sentence is like defying the role of time in human life"

Kenneth Clark, Author

"At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done"

Tracy Kidder, Author

"An apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence"

Letitia Landon, Poet

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