Quotes About Writing

I loved acting, and then acting led to writing, and writing led to directing, and directing lead to five movies, and I feel like the luckiest guy in the world.

The sensibility I brought to directing was similar to what I bring when I write.

Writers are first directors. When directing our own scripts, we would have a better vision and clarity than directing the stories penned by others. I personally think that a writer's job is tough than a director's.

I think I told my parents I wanted to be a writer, just so they'd kind of think I had some direction in life. It made it easier to pick out classes at college, like, 'Oh, this is writing classes, that's what I'm doing.'

As far as writing or directing a film, I've worked with enough people who have done that that I know it's just a whole other level of responsibility and chaos and murder that I could not see happening. For now, I'm just going to see what comes. I know what I like and what direction I have.

I've always felt that in a comedy script the stage directions should also have a comedic value.

I don't write tracking shots in my screenplays or any camera directions, but I do try to give a sense of how the action is moving.

Life begins at 40. I could attempt writing. Life is taking me into different directions.

England gave me a language and literature, the basis of what I am as a writer, but when I started writing more directly about my own experience, it wasn't England so much as what went before.

I would do a sort of violence to myself if I didn't express myself in the directly creative ways of writing, both words and music.

I majored in drama and theater arts at Columbia and was always in acting studio, but that was a liberal arts degree, not a bachelor of arts degree, so I didn't have a traditional conservatory training. There was a lot of reading and a lot of writing involved, and only about 30 percent of my classes were directly theater-related.

The best liars lie with their eyes rather than with their words. This might put writers at a disadvantage.

When I'm writing a first draft of a script, I can disappear into that for two, three months exclusively.

For me, being a writer, you want to communicate with people, but if your goal is that every person is going to love what you do, then you're always going to be disappointed.

Writing about corporate America had sapped my energy, disappointed the editors, and unnerved me.

My poetry is the most disappointing thing for me that I've ever written. When I say I can write everything, I don't say I can write everything well.

Public disapproval is the price I pay for writing about the royals.

I always tell myself every disaster is more material for my work and another anecdote to tell.

I don't want to write because I have to; I want to write because I want to. Sometimes, when writers write because they have to, the results are disastrous.

Writers have to be very careful and discerning because so much of the machine is out of their control.

Art can't be taught; passion can't be taught; discipline can't be taught; but craft can be taught. And writing is both an art and a craft.

I haven't got a writer's discipline.

People, certainly in the U.K., look down on screenwriting as an art form, but I love the discipline of it. Next to the bagginess of novel writing, it almost feels like a martial art.

I would love to write a script, for sure. I write poetry and songs. But writing a script needs a lot of time and discipline.