Quotes About Writing

Now, if, as I think, writing should be, it's a kind of risky trade.

If you're writing a book that takes place in New York in the moment, you can't not write about 9-11; you can't not integrate it. My main character's view is the Statue of Liberty and the Trade Center. It doesn't have to take over, but it has to be acknowledged.

If I just sit here, what am I going to do? I don't have a trade. I don't teach or anything. I just love to make up characters and gradually build a story around them.

Delaying and withholding tactics, red herrings, partial and doubtful outcomes are stock in trade for fiction writers, especially crime writers.

Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing.

A lot of my writer friends live near me, and that makes people think we just hang around with one another in cafes, trading work and discussing 'Harper's' and what not. But I rarely see them. We're home working.

I know what I write about seems exotic to a lot of people, but not for me. I pulled up to an old trading post and saw a few elderly Navajos sitting on a bench. I felt right at home.

I have this memory of being 15 years old, sitting with a friend on the steps of a little bookstore on Bloor Street in Toronto and saying, 'I'll never take money for my writing!' I had such idealism about this idea of trading your soul for money.

It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.

Acting and writing go together. Actors write because they love words and becoming other people - we love to escape into other characters.

I like revising much, much better than getting down a first draft. The first draft is just getting the pieces to the puzzle. Then I get to put the puzzle together!

I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.

I want to write a play. I'd like to do an original musical. I should probably put together a poetry collection.

I have four shelves covered with journals that I've written. Dad and I are writing songs together. I've probably written 100 songs.

TV is a different animal these days. You can bring together really smart writing and directing, in-depth character development and really meaty political and emotional stories.

I have stories that I'd like to maybe one day consider directing, but you need a lot of time to write and put it together.

Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.

All of my characters tend to be montages of different people I've met: little bits and pieces of their personalities put together.

We're all in this together - when one writer succeeds, all writers succeed. I love discovering new authors. I think we need to take care of each other and talk about craft and nurture talent.

The muscles that writers need for film are very different from TV muscles. Now, when I hire the writers and put the writers' room together, I know where their muscles need to be.

As you'll know yourself, there are these moments when you're writing a book when one remark or moment will pull everything together and you'll think, "That's it. I've got what I need."

No, you used nouns and verbs together in a pleasing but illogical format.

London and Fog! When these two come together, it is time to be a writer!

Even while writing his book, he had become painfully aware how little he knew his own planet while attempting to piece together another one from jagged bits filched from deranged brains.