Quotes About Writing

I want to be remembered as an actor who put in some good work in the beginning of his career, even better work at the end of his career and slowly, successfully made the transition into writing and directing.

I've been writing for a long time, and I've loved comic books for a long time - forever - but I had to learn how to write in a different way to write sequential art for a graphic novel. It's been an interesting transition.

One would argue what they do to me on 'Jokers' is already horror. It's an easy transition to write a thriller.

I guess whatever maturity is there may be there because I've been keeping a journal forever. In high school my friends would make fun of me - you're doing your man diary again. So I was always trying to translate experience into words.

I never know how to give advice to a writer because there's so much you could say, and it's hard to translate your own experience. But of course, I always try. The main thing that I usually end up saying is to read a lot. To read a great deal and to learn from that.

Most writers have no idea how to make a film. It's a totally different skill set. Nor is it just to translate exactly what's on the page directly on to the screen - because that would be terrible. It would be five hours long, and the structure would be a mess. But the writers know the characters and the story.

I didn't learn Chinese to write 'Confucius.' That would've been a monumental task. I have three friends who can translate Chinese text for me; all three helped me with my research on Confucius. They are acknowledged in my acknowledgements in the book.

I think it actually started in my late thirties. I started changing psychologically, and it was difficult to translate that into my writing.

I'm not standing above the audience trying to manipulate them as a puppet master or a trickster; I'm inside the story I'm writing and making and thinking about things very seriously and feeling very deeply at times, and trying to translate that into a narrative.

I'm a writer. In Latin America, they say I'm a Latin-American writer because I also write in Spanish and my books are translated, but I am an American citizen and my books are published here, so I'm also an American writer.

Rejection is part of the process, so you can't let it crush you. My first three novels never made it into publication, but my fourth, 'Sheltering Rain,' was translated into 11 languages.

Once I started getting serious about standup I got a better handle on word economy and making jokes punchier, which translated well to Twitter.

It is difficult to survive as an author in Sweden, so for commercial success, it is good idea to write crime, get yourself translated, and live happily ever after.

As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings.

Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit.

I write in a slangy colloquial speech that has not been common in the Israeli tradition of writing, and that is one of the things that gets lost a little in translation.

Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write.

I wrote the first draft of 'Madame Bovary' without studying the previous translations, although I gathered them and took the occasional peek.

I've done a lot of translation in TV, and I can do it. I'm trained to do it. I know how to inject a certain amount of my naturalness into that and where I come from into those things, but it helps if somebody's writing with my experience in mind.

So writing stories is not easier in comparison to the playwriting or translation; the stories are easier in league with them.

There comes a time as you continue to write and work on scripts and screenplays where you realize that you have opinions about the next step of the process, and you kind of want more control over the translation from page to screen.

I don't write thinking directly about what I'm feeling, usually. I just let myself write whatever comes out without it necessarily being directly a translation of what I'm aware that I'm feeling, you know?

If a translation doesn't have obvious writing problems, it may seem quite all right at first glance. We readers, after all, quickly adapt to the style of a translator, stop noticing it, and get caught up in the story.

I try to transmit emotion and soul in my voice, but my true passion has always been writing. I feel more like a writer than anything else.