Quotes About Writing

I dare say that if most comedians today, the gifted ones, were to sit down and write, they'd learn more about their craft. But what happens is they get out there before they learn what their viewpoint is, if any.

I have a huge emotional attachment to characters I've created, especially the viewpoint characters.

I write from this tight third-person viewpoint, where each chapter is seen through the eyes of one individual character. When I'm writing that character, I become that character and identify with that character.

Writing for children, you do bear a responsibility to not include overt or graphic adult content that they are not ready for and don't need, or to address adult concepts or themes from an oblique angle or a child's limited viewpoint, with appropriate context, without being graphic or distressing.

All writers, in all viewpoints, must choose which information and scenes will be presented, and in which order. In that sense, the author is always represented as a point of view in a work of fiction. His hand can always be detected by the discerning.

I can only write from a man's viewpoint.

Every time I think I know what's right and wrong, I end up being wrong. All I want to do is explore. I want to see what people would do. I say, 'What would this person do in this situation?' and I write it down. I'm not writing manifestos of my political views.

The records are black boxes for me. Like, if you want to know who I am, my views, my perspective, things I love, things I hate, my convictions, my anthems. I've never let people's opinions affect the way I write.

I can still boss people around. I can still write. I can still read. I can still eat, and I can still have very strong views.

Real writers - serious writers with serious subjects, who earn their living at it - all seem to write in small rooms with that knotty-pine 1974 look on the top-floor rear of their houses. Rooms with views.

There isn't much political coloration in my economic writing; it's not surprising that few people know my political views. They really aren't very important.

For me, my party views don't advance my narrative. Until I can find a way to write political satire like my idols Christopher Buckley or P.J. O'Rourke, I'll simply say what team I play for and leave it at that.

Once you research an idea, you begin to develop a perspective. Writing about anything in public, often in real time, has helped fashion my views.

What led to my change of views about the Clintons was working through the research and writing on the book on Hillary.

The views I have, the books I write, are read as political, or even as manifestos.

It was a challenge for me to do a plot because I'd been an essayist and a journalist. I had to be vigilant about moving things along and being entertaining.

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.

To reconstruct stories and scenes, nonfiction writers must conduct vigorous and responsible research. In fact, narrative requires more research than traditional reportage, for writers cannot simply tell what they learn and know; rather, they must show it.

Vigorous writing is concise.

I always used to deny this, but I guess what I'm really saying is that I was writing to shock... And I dug deep and dredged up all kinds of vile things which fascinated me at the time.

I wish one time in my life I could do what other writers do... get me a villa in Spain and go there to write a book.

I was living in a house in the West Village of New York and trying to be Carrie Bradshaw. I wrote a whole 5 pages about this character who wasn't going to wear high heels because it was not empowering. I've read that article 1000 times, it's so boring! I was writing really cliched women's stuff which is exactly what I didn't want to write.

I live in Greenwich Village in New York City, but I rarely write at home, where there's too much else to do.

I live in the Village, and the way it's been, people sort of drop in on me and my husband. My husband is Robert Nemiroff, and he, too, is a writer.