Quotes About Writing

I'm an author. And writers write books. And writing books is a full-time career.

I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it's poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one. And I think that my favorite writers definitely have something musical about what they do, in saying something so relatable and universal and so simple.

Writers do well to carefully attend to those moments of inspiration, because chances are that they're writing from a very deep place. The subsequent search that ensues to continually attend to that voice that you hear is what is going to give the story drive.

I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We're still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends.

I think some people think that writers read and read and read, get the information, and then write. That's not how it works. Often, you write yourself into a dark place where you don't know what you need to know, so you go get the information.

Some people are writers and don't ever want to be on camera, some people act and not write - I like writing words for myself to say.

Most producers I've known were writers first, and writing is a vital part of any game show. You could easily argue that the writing is the key ingredient that makes 'Jeopardy!' so great.

And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - every day, no excuses. It's so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they'd rather clean the toilet than do the writing.

Writers in Britain aren't really celebrities. You become kind of a darling of a small set.

I feel like, genre-wise, the walls are coming down in Nashville. There are so many writers who have moved to town from all walks of life. There's this immense respect for country, but there are pop songwriters, R&B. Nashville has become sort of this go-to writing city for every genre.

I find that with any good run on a show with good writers, they put something on paper, and you put something back on film, and that affects what they put on the paper the next time.

Writers' bedtimes vary, but few have been spared the shock of a copy editor's early wake-up call.

History proves that most writers get forgotten anyway. That's very likely to happen to my books, and if I'm extremely lucky, maybe one of my books will survive.

You can write ten versions of a scene, and then, on the day, discover that something in the original scene worked. It's hard on writers. Hard on actors, hard on editors, hard on me, hard on the producers, who require patience and confidence. But I can't get to the end without going through this process.

Without writers, none of the entertainment would exist. It starts with writers. Writers are the most important piece of the entire puzzle.

I spent as much time watching telly and films when I was a kid as I did lying around reading books. I think it's crazy that writers are only allowed to say that certain books have influenced them.

If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.

Writers collect stories of rituals: John Cheever putting on a jacket and tie to go down to the basement, where he kept a desk near the boiler room. Keats buttoning up his clean white shirt to write in, after work.

You know what writers say about their long books: If I had another year, the book would be half as long.

Neophyte writers tend to believe that there is something magical about ideas and that if they can just get a hold of a good one, then their futures are ensured.

The myth of writer as, like, Asperger-style misanthrope, or, like, the Jack Nicholson, 'As Good As It Gets' - it just doesn't work, because writers, in order to write good characters, need to understand people. You need to understand your audience. You need to have so much empathy you could almost encourage empathy in others.

I'm not one of these 'the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me' kind of writers. Wish it was like that.

There's a view of Montana writing that seems stage-managed by the Chamber of Commerce - it's all about writers like A. B. Guthrie and Ivan Doig. It used to bother me that nobody had a scene where somebody was delivering a pizza.

I had neither expert aid nor advice. I studied no courses in writing; until a year or so ago, I never read a book by anybody advising writers how to write.