Quotes About Writing

The novelist, he's not a philosopher, not a technician of spoken language. He's someone who writes, above all, and through the novel asks questions.

Nobody writes like Nabokov; nobody ever will. What I would give to write one sentence like Vladimir!

As so many writers know, the experience of creating an imaginary world is closer to dreaming than it is to normal, grit-your-teeth work. It's preconscious rather than conscious. Ideas fall into your head, and the book writes you, rather than the other way around.

I think nobody since has written such extraordinary work as Shakespeare writes. The characters he writes are full of inconsistencies, which is a great human quality - I mean, we're all very inconsistent in the way we behave.

One who writes a poem writes it because the language prompts, or simply dictates, the next line.

I'm not a writer that writes every day. I just kind of have ideas. I jot them down when I have them, and when I have enough, I just start. And for me, I start more around noon, and I'm all about feeling. Once there's a theme, I can't not write.

When Broken Lizard writes a movie, we reject everything that doesn't have five guys as leads, so it needs to be cops or a basketball team; that's what we can do.

I keep a diary because I love this writer, David Sedaris, and he writes a lot about his diary, and he inspired me to keep one.

The ambition of 'Ten Thousand Saints,' Eleanor Henderson's debut novel about a group of unambitious lost souls, is beautiful. In nearly 400 pages, Henderson does not hold back once: she writes the hell out of every moment, every scene, every perspective, every fleeting impression, every impulse and desire and bit of emotional detritus.

Pete Moffat writes crime conspiracy thrillers so beautifully. He goes places other people wouldn't; he is fearless.

Everybody that writes has their own area of inquiry. And mine has always been kind of, why is it that when life can be so hard and difficult, we compound it by self-sabotage, doing terrible things? That's always been my main area of inquiry, and it does lead you to dark places.

The one who writes a poem writes it above all because verse writing is an extraordinary accelerator of conscience, of thinking, of comprehending the universe.

'White Teeth' has far too many characters, and its plot is tortured. But Smith has an astonishing intellect. She writes sharp dialogue for every age and race - and she's funny as hell.

I'm going to name a name: Janet Evanovich. She writes the same book over and over, and I read every single one of them and eagerly anticipate them.

When I was a kid, we used to play this thing called 'the writing game' with our father. My brother and I would play it - where first person writes a sentence, and the second person writes a sentence, and the third person writes a sentence, and so on until you get bored and have to go to bed.

It's very important to me I get my autobiography out before I die and someone else writes it and screws up my life.

My autobiography would be 'Loves music, loves art, works hard, writes music, tours the world, makes records.'

What I find weird is that the term 'chick lit' is used to encompass literally anything a woman writes about relationships. It's the assumption that because you're female, you must write in a certain way. I don't understand why that is - it is a bit demeaning.

I think that Chad Gray is one of the most honest, emotional, real vocalists there is; he really takes a lot of pride in writing the lyrics, takes a lot of time with them. He writes and re-writes more than just about anybody I've ever been around.

Nobody ever has a problem if a man writes a woman. I wanted to be able to say, 'Well, I can write your men and your action, too. You don't just have to give me the love scenes, which I don't even think are my strong suit.'

I don't know how everyone writes a novel; that sounds exhausting.

We're not the kind of band that writes very well on the road.

My mother, along with Papa's other eventual wives - Pauline, Marty Gelhorn, Mary Welch - they all, at one time or another, no matter how angry they were at him at the moment, said, 'Look, Papa is special. He writes so beautifully. We have to let this go on.'

To find money to make a film, you have to write maybe 50 pages to explain what you'd like to do, what the film will be, but everybody lies. Because he doesn't know what the film will be. Everybody writes 50 pages and sends it to a TV channel, a producer, to get money, but everybody lies. Or else your film is not interesting.