Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

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"I love my work, but do not know how I write it"

Zane Grey, Author

"Inspired by the purse rather than the soul, the mercenary side fairly screams in many of the works put out by every day American publishers"

Alma Gluck, Musician

"People say you can't teach writing, but I think that's nonsense"

Tracy Kidder, Author

"I tell beginning readers to read a lot and write a lot. If you want to write a book, find a subject that's really worth the time and effort you'll put in"

Tracy Kidder, Author

"What's really fun is to write under different names"

Tom Verlaine, Musician

"I didn't want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that's a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I'm proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it"

Haruki Murakami, Writer

"Writing in other voices is almost Japanese in the sense that there's a certain formality there which allows me to sidestep the embarrassment of directly expressing to complete strangers the most intimate details of my life"

Suzanne Vega, Musician

"Of course, sometimes when you write personally, you are also writing about society, obliquely reflecting topical issues, but not in a way that people would expect you to or in the way that someone trying to make a point would"

Suzanne Vega, Musician

"Writing detective stories is about writing light literature, for entertainment. It isn't primarily a question of writing propaganda or classical literature"

Stieg Larsson, Author

"I have been threatened occasionally. But that happens to everybody who is writing this kind of things. Threats will come without fail. It might happen to the most 'innocent' texts. If it gets too much, we call the police"

Stieg Larsson, Author

"You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination"

Larry McMurtry, Writer

"Well, we took it apart scene by scene. We examined every sentence, every full stop, every comma. He has a most wonderful eye for detail, Roman, and you know, he's a very good artist"

Ronald Harwood, Playwright

"Royal Canadian Air Farce, and I was in three sketches there. And they wrote some really great stuff for me"

Trish Stratus, Entertainer

"Ensure that your script is watertight. If it's not on the page, it will never magically appear on the screen"

Richard E. Grant, Actor

"And then, all of a sudden, you're like, all that's great and fun, but Arthur Miller's in my dressing room. This is the third night he's been here and he sits in my dressing room for an hour after each show, and talks to me for an hour. So I'm pretty spoiled right now"

Peter Krause, Actor

"When you're in the States and you're a writer and you've got money and you walk into a bank, you're a bum with money"

Norman Spinrad, Author

"I must admit to being greatly influenced by Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces"

Norman Spinrad, Author

"You set up a story and it turns inside out and that is, for me, the most exciting sort of story to write. The viewer thinks it's going to be about something and it does the opposite"

Nigel Kneale, Writer

"They're getting me involved in intrigue again, and I think it follows a classic formula in a soap opera"

Michael Zaslow, Actor

"I have been writing for 50 years and readers still read my first book from when I was in the Marine Corps"

Leon Uris, Writer

"I love new writing, new blood, modern works by unknown writers"

Joseph Fiennes, Actor

"Ira Gershwin, shame on him. I mean, some of the writing"

Joni Mitchell, Musician

"More negatives write than call. It's a cheap shot for me to go on the air with the critical letters or e-mail I get, because the reaction of the listeners is always an instantaneous expression of sympathy for me and contempt for the poor critic"

John Hall

"He leaned about the same way in falling towards Jacqueline, forward, down towards the bottom of the car"

Abraham Zapruder, Businessman

"If you'll think about various series you've read, can you think of any instance in which, say, the tenth volume of the series is notably better than the first nine? I can't"

Thomas Perry, Musician

"I do have to earn a living, so I'm conscious of probable reactions from readers, but the most important one is still the awareness that if I'm not enjoying a story, the reader won't either"

Thomas Perry, Musician

"My temperament is not geared to that of a novelist"

Philip Levine, Poet

"What is writing but an expression of my own life?"

Zane Grey, Author

"This motion-picture muddle had distracted me from my writing"

Zane Grey, Author

"Now the writing in the head, I definitely do every day, thinking about how I want to phrase something or how I'd like to rephrase something I've already written"

Stanley Crouch, Critic

"I still have a problem with nuns. I follow them around like a kitten with a ball of yarn. After a while, all my characters become very close friends"

Meg Tilly, Actress

"My attitude to writing is like when you do wallpapering, you remember where all the little bits are that don't meet. And then your friends say: It's terrific!"

Harrison Birtwistle, Composer

"Now I am a writer who can command fairly good payments from magazines with large circulations, I very often refuse to write for them, and still write sometimes for small magazines for nothing"

George Woodcock, Writer

"Write a page a day. It will add up"

Herman Wouk, Novelist

"Discount my partiality, but my report is that so far The Winds of War is looking good"

Herman Wouk, Novelist

"I had read tons of science fiction. I was fascinated by other worlds, other environments. For me, it was fantasy, but it was not fantasy in the sense of pure escapism"

James Cameron, Director

"I've sort of dealt with the characters' lives more, particularly the women characters"

Gilbert Hernandez, Artist

"I compromised my ability to tell my story, at the most basic level"

Joyce Maynard, Writer

"There aren't enough good journalists. There are too many who really weren't groomed to be reporters and, as a result, some of the reporting is shallow"

Will McDonough, Writer

"I like to write first-person because I like to become the character I'm writing"

Wally Lamb, Author

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