Quotes About Writing

In the history of postwar German writing, for the first 15 or 20 years, people avoided mentioning political persecution - the incarceration and systematic extermination of whole peoples and groups in society. Then, from 1965, this became a preoccupation of writers - not always in an acceptable form.

I'm not sure the risks I take are any different from what other writers take, since we all serve at the pleasure of the reader.

I am suspicious of writers who go looking for issues to address. Writers are neither preachers nor journalists. Journalists know much more than most writers about what's going on in the world. And if you want to change things, you do journalism.

A lot of new writers assume you have to know the where the story is going and that it flows out as molten gold. But really, sometimes you think you are going to one place, but then you decide that is dumb idea. Then you go somewhere else and it is a worse idea. But then you switch again and you might have a beautiful accident.

The first story I ever sold was to 'Argosy' magazine, which no longer exists. That issue also contained work by several other more celebrated writers, like Ray Bradbury - so I felt I had at least one toe on the ladder.

However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously.

Rock and roll stars have it much better than writers when they're on a tour.

The children of great authors do not, as a rule, become writers.

Don't all writers have a hidden nerve, call it a secret chamber, something irreducibly theirs, which stirs their prose and makes it tick and turn this way or that, and identifies them, like a signature, though it lurks far deeper than their style, or their voice or other telltale antics?

All writers are magpies, right? We're always stealing bits from different places and then weaving them into our little nest.

Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan and the slew of fantastic writers and directors have always geared me towards making a three-dimensional human.

Whining writers are a hideous sight; we should really shut up, because we are lucky if we can cobble together a living from all of this.

The best writers who have put pen to paper have often had a journalism background.

In the 1930s, the government paid writers to interview 80- and 90-year-old former slaves, and I read those accounts. I came away realizing - not surprisingly - that many slave masters were sadists who spent a lot of time thinking up creative ways of hurting people.

Some scientists use TeX or LatEX but for most people Word is the thing that writers use these days.

Some writers - most, I suspect - write in isolation. I think I'd always found that quite difficult.

I admire writers such as Elmore Leonard who can nail a character in three or four lines of dialogue, so he doesn't need pages of back story or clumsy exposition.

If you want to teach women to be great writers, you should show them the best, and the best was often done by men. It was more often done by men than by women, if we're going to be truthful.

If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that, I don't think.

When I was a bad writer, I would consciously imitate other NPR writers who I thought were wonderful. I suppose that everyone's artistic practice is different. But I collaborate and sometimes don't agree at all with my collaborators' opinions. It forces you to understand why you don't agree with something: what's the fight you're picking.

I don't think, generally speaking, people become writers because they were the really good, really cool, attractive kid in class. I'll be honest. This is our revenge for people who were much better looking and more popular than us. I was a bit like that, I suppose.

I didn't know anything about writers. It never occurred to me they were regular people and that I could grow up to become one, even though I loved to make up stories inside my head.

One of the things I really love about TV is this symbiotic relationship you can get between the writers and the actors, and the characters start to come to life because you start to collaborate.

The really great writers are people like Emily Bronte who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.