Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

Similar topics:Anime Art Games Movie Music Poetry

"The author knows just what he wants to illustrate and how he would like it to be done"

Louis Leakey, Scientist

"Over the years, I've trained myself to speak using the same language I would use if I were typing: meaning using full sentences in the way that paragraphs and scenes are arranged"

Kevin J. Anderson, Author

"It was like there was a pile of kindling that was in the back of my imagination just waiting there. Once I lit it, it just flared up and I kept getting ideas and ideas"

Kevin J. Anderson, Author

"I sold my very first novel when I was 24 or 25 years old"

Kevin J. Anderson, Author

"I often write either really early in the morning, or really late at night"

Tracy Chapman, Musician

"I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don't have a little list of topics to write about"

Tracy Chapman, Musician

"You know, so I was a weird, eccentric kid but I did believe in the power of the word and of the word being made flesh, I suppose, which again I suppose came from my temperament as well as my upbringing"

Thomas Keneally, Novelist

"And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind"

Thomas Keneally, Novelist

"Telling your story out loud is the way human beings communicate. We don't normally think up words, translate how to spell them, and then move our fingers up and down over this randomly arranged set of keys to make the same letters appear on a screen"

Kevin J. Anderson, Author

"Each book will have a lot of cliffhangers, because I like that"

Kevin J. Anderson, Author

"I write 2,000 words a day when I write. It sometimes takes three hours, it sometimes takes five hours"

Nicholas Sparks, Author

"A typical agent in New York gets 400 query letters a month. Of those, they might ask to read 3-4 manuscripts, and of those, they might ask to represent 1"

Nicholas Sparks, Author

"Where questions of style and exposition are concerned, I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself"

John Searle, Philosopher

"The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia"

Tracy Kidder, Author

"I think if the writing comes too easily, it shows - it's usually hard to read"

Tracy Kidder, Author

"I'm a writer. The more I act, the more resistance I have to it. If you accept work in a movie, you accept to be entrapped for a certain part of time, but you know you're getting out. I'm also earning enough to keep my horses, buying some time to write"

Sam Shepard, Playwright

"I have some great stories and I will get around to writing a book"

Sally Kirkland, Actress

"We try to be driven by what's a good story, what's truthful, and the drama of what happens next"

Laura Innes, Actress

"You can't make a living as a playwright. You can barely scrape by"

Sam Shepard, Playwright

"Well, a lead is the most important thing about the story"

Kurt Loder, Journalist

"Rewriting is a large part of the whole job. And get rid of stuff that's not working. Just pare it down until it's a beautiful thing you can hand in, probably late, to your editor"

Kurt Loder, Journalist

"I came over here and worked for rock magazines, and I worked for Rolling Stone, which has a very high standard of journalism, a very good research department"

Kurt Loder, Journalist

"And the most important thing you can do is learn to edit yourself. And then go back and rewrite"

Kurt Loder, Journalist

"Unless you're doing a feature piece, which is going to be longer, and you have more time to get into stuff"

Kurt Loder, Journalist

"It's gonna be short if it's news; put it at the top. Style's not an issue, just make it news"

Kurt Loder, Journalist

"I think it has most to do with the way in which a story is told, whether it feels real either via the music of the telling or the 'honesty' of the story"

Chris Ware, Artist

"No, I can't write treatments, I think there's a danger with treatments. That you... you write out your first excitement and enthusiasm in a prose treatment"

Ronald Harwood, Playwright

"I regard the writing of humor as a supreme artistic challenge"

Herman Wouk, Novelist

"I've got more ideas for books than I'll ever be able to use in my lifetime. I'm very fortunate like that"

Brad Thor, Novelist

"It even has the same phraseology as the English orders of knighthood, companions and this sort of thing"

George Woodcock, Writer

"I want to describe the psychological state of the people in a certain city"

Orhan Pamuk, Novelist

"You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it"

Jonathan Coe, Novelist

"Luckily, in my case, I have managed, by writing, to do the one thing that I always wanted to do"

Jonathan Coe, Novelist

"I became quite taken over by Johnson's personality at some points while writing the biography, and since I went straight on to The Closed Circle afterwards, I did sometimes feel I could hear him whispering in my ear while I was working on it"

Jonathan Coe, Novelist

"Ah, well, I have no talent for nonfiction, that's my problem"

Jonathan Coe, Novelist

"I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story"

John Irving, Novelist

"And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you"

John Irving, Novelist

"For me, there is nothing worse than the knowledge that my life holds nothing for me but being a writer"

Jean Stafford, Writer

"Omit needless words"

William Strunk, Jr., Writer

"Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-committal language"

William Strunk, Jr., Writer

Page 88 of 130