Quotes About Writing

When I started writing, I was reading people such as Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton, who did 'Jurassic Park,' which is possibly the most action-filled book you'll read, apart from mine, and I said to myself, 'Why aren't these guys doing big-scale action like you would see in a movie?'

If the question is, 'Do I wish I made thirty million dollars a year,' the answer is, 'You bet.' If the question is, 'Do I wish I could write like Tom Clancy,' the answer must remain, 'No.'

I've been writing the show with Nigel Coan, the director of 'Luxury Comedy', and Tom Meeten. Three's good. With two, you can lock horns a bit. On your own, you're not sure whether what you've made is any good. I don't know how people write novels. I would go mad.

I wrote a film for Tom Hanks and I wrote two films for Paul Greengrass that didn't actually happen. The paradox is that the bigger the film you write, the less likely it is to happen.

As a writer, you sit around a computer all day, and it's too easy to open another tab and keep Rotten Tomatoes there.

I'm not patient - and I'm getting more impatient as I get older - but I am disciplined about writing, and I want that on my tombstone: 'He wasn't patient, but he was disciplined.'

The reason I wrote 'You Suck' was that I so enjoyed spending time with Tommy and Jody.

I have been active as a writer and journalist for nearly forty years. But the number of great reporters I have run across in that time would make, as they say, a slim book. Without question, the top man on my list would be Tommy Thompson.

Writing is not work. In fact, there's nothing better. Writing is something that if the music business went completely away tomorrow - radio stations quit existing and music quit being popular and it was old hat - I would still write songs.

If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, my patients will not even be postponed. Another surgeon would step in and take over. The reason to do research and writing is that it at least makes me feel not entirely replaceable. If I didn't write, I don't know if I would do surgery.

I have no plans for a future Jemima Shore mystery, but would write one tomorrow if a good idea came to me.

If I couldn't get published tomorrow I'd still be writing. It's something to do with feeling so overwhelmed by this experience of life that you have to tell someone about it, and in a way that reorders the experience to make it manageable.

September 11 reinforced for me that whatever I'm writing about, it better be something that really matters to me because we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. And for me it's stories about people in pain in New York.

Late night is no different than making a film, really, except that it's faster, and if you do a crap one, you can do a better one tomorrow. Writing a novel and doing stand-up - that stuff is very similar.

If I had been asked to write 1,200 words for a newspaper tomorrow, on any subject, I would just do it rather than leave a white hole in the page. And I think it's a very healthy attitude to take to writing anything.

Screenwriting and the movie stuff could all disappear tomorrow, but to sit down with my laptop and still tell stories is my day job. I didn't believe I'd actually get to do it for a living.

Later, in the afternoon, I read what I did that morning. It's almost always a surprise. But I can read it rationally; edit, polish, re-write, and think what I might do tomorrow in the early darkness.

Try to write at least 500 words a day. You may ditch 499 of them tomorrow, but you will still be moving forward.

I actually didn't believe the producers when they said, 'Joy, we're writing a movie about your life'. I was like, 'Oh, OK, fine, call me tomorrow.'

I'm really not a journalist, and I don't do a ton of newsy pieces. Occasionally I'll write about something that's going on recently, but I really don't do a ton of stuff that's tied to current events.

I was an English major in college, took a ton of creative writing courses, and was a newspaper reporter for 10 years.

Something that bothered people about 'Dawson's Creek' but as a writer, I kind of dug: writing those kids as though they were college grad students. It was fun and liberating and made for a true sort of writer's show. It was a fun year for me, because I got to get out of debt with my first TV job, and I learned a ton.

When I was younger, I would write a ton, mostly because my mom told me I had incredible creativity and a gift of using words, only these were words that didn't get me in trouble.

I didn't write a ton before 'After,' to be honest.