Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

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"If they aren't real enough to surprise me, then they aren't real enough to go on the page"

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Writer

"Writing, I'm convinced, should be a subversive activity - frowned on by the authorities - and not one cooed over and praised beyond common sense by some teacher"

Dan Simmons, Author

"Sometimes I read a script and it's obvious from early on that it's one where the suspension of disbelief has to develop strongly from page one. Some are more reality-based"

Gillian Anderson, Actress

"A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate"

Christopher Hampton, Playwright

"I am quite unsatisfied by the distinctions between the oral and literate"

David Antin, Poet

"I love graphic design. I love working with design, and I love storytelling, so I've been working on a children's book for a while, and I'd like to see that through"

Colleen Haskell, Celebrity

"Anyone who writes knows that ultimately the majority of your time is spent alone in a room with a piano or a guitar, no matter what the project is"

Trey Anastasio, Musician

"I honestly feel like we never had a bad episode by TV standards. Every week I felt there were so many strong components of the show, especially the writing"

Donal Logue, Actor

"I was well traveled, and I created this illusion of literacy through reading and writing. I wrote a book of short stories"

Tom T. Hall, Musician

"Faulkner was almost oriental. I never got into Faulkner"

Tom T. Hall, Musician

"It is impossible to read for pleasure from something to which you are both father and mother, born in such travail that the writer despises the thing that enslaved him"

Jim Bishop, Journalist

"But when it comes to writing the thing that I've sort of been thinking about lately, is why? You know, is it rational? Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they feel they were put on this Earth to do?"

Elizabeth Gilbert, Novelist

"But I think it's undeniable that the Times is a liberal paper"

Daniel Okrent, Editor

"Last week I did a piece for Style on advice to Laura Bush about how to help her husband. This week it's religion. It just depends on what I find interesting at the moment"

Sally Quinn, Journalist

"I write in the mornings. During my down time"

Stanley Tucci, Actor

"Every poll shows that most journalists are Democrats"

Sally Quinn, Journalist

"The reason I love comics more than anything else is that the longest story will be just a few pages. With a novel, it takes so many pages to get to one thing happening"

Sergio Aragones, Cartoonist

"Suspense is very important. Even though this is humor and they're short stories, that theory of building suspense is still there"

Sergio Aragones, Cartoonist

"I have always loved horror very much. I used to write stories for DC's House of Mystery. It was one of my first jobs writing for comics, and I loved it!"

Sergio Aragones, Cartoonist

"Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives"

David Antin, Poet

"It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel"

David Antin, Poet

"It's one of the strangest attributes of this profession that when we writers get exhausted writing one thing, we relax by writing another"

Dan Simmons, Author

"Eventually I would like to touch all the genres. I would like to do some detective stories, and I want to do a Western. I would want to do humorous Westerns!"

Sergio Aragones, Cartoonist

"I've always worked on the principle that if it interests me enough to write about it, then it must interest a lot of other people"

Morris West, Writer

"And I've always worked on the principle that if it interests me enough to write about it, then it must interest a lot of other people"

Morris West, Writer

"As the writer, you're always a presence in the song. If you get close to what human beings are like, you're writing about common experience. We all do much the same things, so if you nail somebody, then you've also nailed yourself"

Richard Thompson, Musician

"I wanted nothing less than to be a fiction writer when I was a kid. If you had told me I would be an artist or novelist when I grew up, I would have laughed in your face"

Caleb Carr, Novelist

"When I'm working on something, I proceed as if no one else will ever read it"

Anne Tyler, Novelist

"I forget a book as soon as I finish writing it, which is not always a good thing"

Anne Tyler, Novelist

"I do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage"

Anne Tyler, Novelist

"Excuse my scribbling, it is late, and I have a poor candle"

Henri Rousseau, Artist

"There were also some cruel reviews by women, but the tone of the male reviewers, sometimes hysterical, was different. I have suffered, but I don't want to name names-but there have been men who have seemed to want to destroy me or my writing, men I don't even know"

Marguerite Young, Author

"If you don't have obsessions, don't write. My characters are obsessed"

Marguerite Young, Author

"I've been willing to go for years without publishing. That's been my career"

Marguerite Young, Author

"I knew Anais Nin, who called me after I had been away for a few years. She was seeking help because at that time no one would give her a decent review. She was made fun of"

Marguerite Young, Author

"To do the writing, I have to have time to do research"

Jean-Jacques Annaud, Director

"It's true that it's a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them"

Anne Tyler, Novelist

"I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows"

Anne Tyler, Novelist

"I don't want to say I hear voices; well, actually I do hear voices, but I don't think it's supernatural. I think it's just that when characters are given enough texture and backbone, then lo and behold, they stand on their own"

Anne Tyler, Novelist

"I can never tell ahead of time which book will give me trouble - some balk every step of the way, others seem to write themselves - but certainly the mechanics of writing, finding the time and the psychic space, are easier now that my children are grown"

Anne Tyler, Novelist

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