Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

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"Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something"

Ann Patchett, Author

"Primarily I'm a social commentator rather than someone who's out to get the belly laugh"

Jonathan Shapiro, Cartoonist

"Without sounding too pretentious, I was sort of a slave to the narrative. When the narrative cracks in, I have to go where it takes me. I had to go to the Bohemian Grove. It was the obvious end to the book"

Jon Ronson, Journalist

"The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning"

Anne Tyler, Novelist

"I think it must be very hard to be one of the new young writers who are urged to put themselves forward, when it may be the last thing on earth they'd be good at"

Anne Tyler, Novelist

"I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns"

Anne Tyler, Novelist

"I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it"

Ann Patchett, Author

"I've done it with Broadcast News-where there was no finish line, there was no agenda that I had to move all the characters to this point, that I was sort of open to what happens"

James L. Brooks, Producer

"It's just a matter of writing the kind of book I enjoy reading. Something better be happening at the beginning, and then on every page after, or I get irritated"

Jonathan Franzen, Novelist

"I used to think it was hard to write, and I still find the process more or less unpleasant, but if I know what I'm doing, it rattles along, then the rewrite whips it into shape rather quickly"

Jonathan Franzen, Novelist

"I live in London and I am a British subject, although I do write in Spanish, of course"

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Novelist

"I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish"

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Novelist

"I am a writer of fragments"

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Novelist

"The Italian prose tale had begun to exercise that influence as early as Chaucer's time: but circumstances and atmosphere were as yet unfavourable for its growth"

George Saintsbury, Writer

"One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name"

George Saintsbury, Writer

"At first, I did stories on people who were maybe just eccentric. Omar was a natural progression from that"

Jon Ronson, Journalist

"You know, some of the good part of blog theory was that blogs would be like diaries that the world could read. They would be spontaneous, whatever pops into your mind, as a diary would be"

Gregg Easterbrook, Author

"All fiction becomes autobiographical when the author has true talent"

Jeanne Moreau, Actress

"Perhaps the biggest problem in journalism is the cult divide between journalists and corporate owners"

Ken Auletta, Journalist

"You are just in the middle of a struggle with words which are really very stubborn things, with a blank page, with the damn thing that you use to write with, a pen or a typewriter, and you forget all about the reader when you are doing that"

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Novelist

"I have assiduously avoided calling my books novels"

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Novelist

"I do not consider myself a Hispanic writer"

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Novelist

"I do not believe in inspiration, but I must have a title in order to work, otherwise I am lost"

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Novelist

"I am against the notion of style in itself"

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Novelist

"But I do not have the reader in mind when I write. No true writer does that"

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Novelist

"American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter"

Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Novelist

"Stories where the author has known very little, but run a computer program that tells him how to construct a planet, and looked up specific things about rocketry and so on, really suck"

Frederik Pohl, Writer

"When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people's weirdness in that way"

Jonathan Franzen, Novelist

"I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second"

Jonathan Franzen, Novelist

"I feel as if I'm clearly part of a trend among writers who take themselves seriously - and I confess to taking myself as seriously as the next writer"

Jonathan Franzen, Novelist

"I knew that I wanted to be a writer even before I knew exactly what being a writer entailed"

Dan Simmons, Author

"As far as advice, that will be in my next book, my next collection. I certainly never like to instruct anyone, but just say as I feel. That's the same as advice, isn't it?"

Fay Wray, Actress

"To this day, I get rewrite offers where they say: 'We feel this script needs work with character, dialogue, plot and tone,' and when you ask what's left, they say: 'Well, the typing is very good'"

John Sayles, Director

"I never thought about being a writer as I grew up. A writer wasn't something I wanted to be. An outfielder was something to be. Most of what I know about style I learned from Roberto Clemente"

John Sayles, Director

"But compared to writing a novel, where you can be God, I did the Bay of Pigs invasion in six pages once, and there were 50,000 guys with boots that I didn't have to pay, and all those extras; we didn't have to pay them"

John Sayles, Director

"I want to get within myself and write. I really, really want to write!"

Garth Brooks, Musician

"The Odyssey is, indeed, one of the greatest of all stories, it is the original romance of the West; but the Iliad, though a magnificent poem, is not much of a story"

George Saintsbury, Writer

"For what I wrote that started this whole controversy, I deserved to be criticized, and I felt bad about writing it. I felt bad mainly as a writer and a thinker"

Gregg Easterbrook, Author

"I think it's one of the Times' problems that they haven't made it clear to readers what various formats mean"

Daniel Okrent, Editor

"Gail didn't want me commenting on the opinion pages. I was hired by the news department and, despite the rabid assertions of the Times' enemies and detractors, the two really have nothing to do with each other"

Daniel Okrent, Editor

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