Arts, Media & Entertainment: Writing Quotes

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"I concentrate on the lives of individuals whom the reader comes to know and feel with intimately"

Helen Dunmore, Poet

"The number one reason I write is to come to schools and see my readers. I would do it for free"

Frank Murphy, Politician

"I'm one of the lucky writers: plots come easily to me"

Caroline B. Cooney, Writer

"I write journals and would recommend journal writing to anyone who wishes to pursue a writing career. You learn a lot. You also remember a lot... And memory is important"

Judy Collins, Musician

"Then, of course, there are those sad occasions when a poet or a writer has not grown, and one has to let them go because they're just not making headway. But we have a very clear personal relationship with the authors"

James Laughlin, Poet

"Often something comes in from which you can see that the person is good, the book may not be perfect as it is, and the person doesn't want to do a re-write. That's something we do almost nothing of"

James Laughlin, Poet

"To me, every interview, even if you love the artist, needs to be somewhat adversarial. Which doesn't mean you need to attack the person, but you do need to look at it like you're trying to get information that has not been written about before"

Chuck Klosterman, Critic

"People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research"

Frederik Pohl, Writer

"Comedians are really writers who don't have pens and pencils about them, but they riff"

Carl Reiner, Actor

"I've heard people say, 'I love how the characters never say what they're really thinking, and I love how things are so open-ended and you just never know what's going to happen.' Do you know what I mean? So it's an opinion, you know? I've heard very few, if any, criticisms of the show, and I think that it obviously is working, whatever we're doing"

Elizabeth Moss, Actress

"My characters always like themselves"

Amy Sedaris, Actress

"I try to ground most of my characters in reality somehow. That's kind of what I bring to the table"

Donnie Wahlberg, Actor

"The thing is, the reader doesn't want to hear about bad times"

Davy Jones, Musician

"Actually, my first eight books were historical novels, but they were never published"

Caroline B. Cooney, Writer

"Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind"

Catherine Drinker Bowen, Writer

"I think that what people want from cable news channels is the sense that if there's hard news, it's going to come up immediately"

Brit Hume, Journalist

"People really want to think that these things really happened. I don't know why that important, but I know that when I finish reading a novel or something, I want to know how much of that really happened to this author"

Alison Bechdel, Cartoonist

"I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun, it reveals itself"

Alice Hoffman, Author

"Fiction came quite a while later. I began with short stories and fiction for children"

Helen Dunmore, Poet

"Even if I knew for certain that I would never have anything published again, and would never make another cent from it, I would still keep on writing"

Brenda Ueland, Writer

"But, somewhere in there, I did have the thought that this really fits in with my thinking about what I wanted to do; with what has to be done by a writer in order to stay alive as a writer"

A. E. van Vogt, Author

"This book was company for me - I wrote these things when I was in hotels, far from where I normally live. I never intended to publish it"

Catherine Deneuve, Actress

"But we wanted to work in a way we never had, which was write everything together. We had to face each other in the same creative room, which gets tougher as you get older, because you don't want to be confrontational"

Bruce McCulloch, Actor

"Maybe I was 7 - I probably am exaggerating a little - and immediately was plunged into the fact that there was an official place to put your fantasies. Up until then I didn't know what I would do with them all. It was very exciting for me, and I began very, very early on"

Bob Balaban, Actor

"You don't say, I'm going to be a writer when I grow up - at least I didn't"

Anthony Doerr, Writer

"When you're writing for newspapers, you have all these parameters. You can't swear, you have to use short paragraphs, all that. If you stay within those parameters, you have lots of freedom because you're writing for the next day"

Chuck Klosterman, Critic

"A quotation in a speech, article or book is like a rifle in the hands of an infantryman. It speaks with authority"

Brendan Francis, Playwright

"I don't think I make much of a distinction between the 'real' and the 'fantastic.' They both seem to be threads in the same cloth as far as I'm concerned"

Alice Hoffman, Author

"I hope that I can get people to read it without having to change it. Especially now that the strip has more different kinds of characters. It's really not all lesbians any more"

Alison Bechdel, Cartoonist

"I get a lot of mail from men who really identify with Stuart, you know, Sparrow's boyfriend. I love that. Even though I used to say I wanted men to read the strip even though there weren't any men in it, so they'd be forced to identify with the women"

Alison Bechdel, Cartoonist

"Hawthorne has given us a tradition that some people refer to as Yankee Magic Realism, and I do think there is a certain quality to the landscape that definitely leads into the dark woods"

Alice Hoffman, Author

"I think that most writers who wait until they're inspired to write are just waiting for the fear to subside"

Barry Mann, Musician

"You can get stale writing with each other for a while"

Barry Mann, Musician

"I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music"

Amos Oz, Writer

"We've had a series of major news stories that have brought in viewers who either were sampling to see what else was available or were normal news watchers. The Florida recount and the end of the election was a huge development. And then 9/11 came along"

Brit Hume, Journalist

"It's difficult for me to feel that a solid page without the breakups of paragraphs can be interesting. I break mine up perhaps sooner than I should in terms of the usage of the English language"

A. E. van Vogt, Author

"I think it's a terrible thing to write and not enjoy it. It's a sad thing. But of course a lot of people do work because they need to eat. And we all need to eat, but that's not the only reason to work. You couldn't have paid me not to write"

Anne Perry, Novelist

"I did a complete rewrite of 650 pages in two weeks"

Anne Perry, Novelist

"Mystery writers' conventions are usually good, and this one has been excellent and extremely well prepared and thought out in advance. A lot of people have given their time and their skill, and a good deal of wit, and Anchorage has made us extraordinarily welcome"

Anne Perry, Novelist

"In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink"

Catherine Drinker Bowen, Writer

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