Quotes About Writing

At one point, I wrote 20 jokes a day, and I had a commitment to send them to the same three people. Now, I just write down what my husband says in his sleep. He's the funniest person, even unconscious.

I've got a role in the new Billy Bob Thornton movie that Billy Bob wrote and is going to direct called 'Jayne Mansfield's Car.' I only have four scenes, but I have as much dialogue as anybody in the movie.

As a child, I was fascinated by the stories of Dickens acting out everything in front of the mirror as he wrote it down. Later, when you approach his work as an actor, you notice how sayable the dialogue is.

I remember little of the Yukon or what I wrote there.

I wrote an article on a new Porsche for 'Automobile Magazine.' I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I'm more proud of that than anything.

As far as I'm concerned, 'The Caretaker' is funny up to a point. Beyond that, it ceases to be funny, and it was because of that point that I wrote it.

I'm a dramatist, so I really always wrote and directed at the same time because when I wrote something, I always put it on its feet. So I'm in love with actors; I always loved actors.

Believe it or not, there are some things that I have written that would be kind of a dream to make. Hopefully, I will get to finance them... There is something that I wrote called 'Demon's Flare' which would kind of be a dream come true.

I recently discovered the work of Giorgio Manganelli, who wrote a collection called 'Centuria,' which contains 100 stories, each of them about a page long. They're somewhat surreal and extremely dense, at once fierce and purifying, the equivalent of a shot of grappa. I find it helpful to read one before sitting down to write.

I wrote all four of my books at Starbucks.

I wrote a great deal about the Civil Rights Movement when I was writing for 'The Nation' in the '60s, and also for Esquire magazine. Reading the biography of Coffin, it just reminded me that in those days, when you saw the term 'Christian,' it usually meant people for civil rights and for justice.

I wrote stories as a kid just for myself. One day, some of the kids in my class found some of my stories in my bag, and I was deeply embarrassed until I realised they enjoyed reading them.

When I wrote 'The Rozabal Line,' I had no preconceived notions of what a commercial bestseller should be. I have always viewed 'The Rozabal Line' as my first love and probably my best work. The fact, however, is that it is my least read work.

Do you know why Albert Camus was so prolific? He wrote to keep from screaming.

I wrote a few unsuccessful screenplays before I wrote 'Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.' I wrote them as television plays that never got made. I'm glad I wrote them - I think it was a good experience.

I was Irish; I was a woman. Yet night after night, bent over the table, I wrote in forms explored and sealed by English men hundreds of years before. I saw no contradiction.

I was a political journalist for a long time. I wrote a book about Putin. I made all kinds of trouble.

Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.

I wrote my own play, 'The Westie Monologues,' about where I'm from in Australia, and it was very successful. From that, I started getting offers from television.

I wrote a novel for my degree, and I'm very happy I didn't submit that to a publisher. I sympathize with my professors who had to read it.

The fact that people are already reading and loving something I wrote is still hard to believe.

In a sense, I wrote the book about Jesus that I wanted to read.

By the time I wrote 'Any Given Sunday' or 'Bats,' I sort of knew what my job was in terms of what a writer of dialogue does.

I always wrote for myself. I figured I'm not that different from other people. If there's a story I like a lot, there's got to be others with similar tastes.