Quotes About Writing

Poetry is how I feed the soul, and it's how I fire the furnace of writing.

People sometimes ask who I would cast in my books and I never have any idea. I don't think I could ever write a book thinking of it as a movie the whole time. This would be like building a house and filling it with furniture just so you could have blueprints.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, 'No, I'm just going to write what I feel I should write.'

My dad was Chinese-American and very conservative when it came to his family's futures. He said if I wanted to have a secure job, I should go into science. So I did what Dad said and went to medical school, but the writing bug never left me.

If you want to be taken seriously and gain credibility, you really do have to try and write yourself. I don't want to do an album of covers and stuff.

When Truman Capote wrote from the perspective of condemned murderers from a lower economic class than his own, he had some gall. But writing fiction takes gall.

I knew so many gangsters, and I call on that experience with them for characters.

You know that gap between where you are and where you'd like to be? Within that gap, there is an ache and an aspirational leap, which is very good for writing.

I'm a writer. My job is to speak what - that which I think is true. If that bridges the gap, that's good. If it doesn't, that's too bad.

There's a market for fiction based on financial services. People wanted me to write stories based on this sector. There's a gap in the market, and I'm trying to fill it.

I've been deeply involved in writing garbage since I was 16.

I was about 28-29 when I wrote my first story, and that was called 'The Garden of Abdul Gasazi.'

The first time that I saw people actually make the thing that I wrote was my first episode of 'Six Feet Under.' It was called 'Back To The Garden.'

I've tried everywhere, but my garden shed is the most effective place to write.

I see myself as a writer who happens to garden.

Column writing is like gas - it fills the available space.

I watched 'Freaks and Geeks,' and I was like, 'Oh, if you write about your own personal experiences, and if you're specific about it both in what happened and how you felt about it, it can make for scenes that are really compelling.' For the rest of college, I was basically ripping off 'Freaks and Geeks' with plays I wrote and stuff like that.

If you take 'Cheers' and 'Seinfeld' and watch the early shows, they're kind of awkward. It took a while for the writers and everything to gel.

I got offered to do a book yeah, and they said to me, 'Gem, you're so busy, how about we get someone to walk around with you with a dictaphone,' and that's how we did it.

On one hand, my gender has never been an issue. The issue has always been what's on the page. But the reality is, an awful lot of women fought an awful lot of battles to get me to that place.

I generally write a first draft that's pretty lean. Just get the story down.

Generating comic material can sometimes get the better of you.

I think every writer wants future generations to read what he has written.

A lot of times, scripts are written so the character is all one way. Even with 'Bringing Out the Dead,' the character was written a little more generic.