Quotes About Writers

It's just my natural way - to be funny. I don't know why that is. But as I've said, humor is a quick cover for shock, horror, confusion. The critics hate funny writers for the most part. They think funny is not serious, but I think that funny can be even more serious than nonfunny. And it can be more affecting, too.

As far as personal philosophies go, I think you should know your ending. I know that's radically different from a lot of other writers who just organically like to find the story. Other than that, I try different things and mess around. I'm still just playing a good bit.

I think we need to radically reimagine the future - citizens, artist, writers, politicians, everyone.

When I think about writers who use fiction as social commentary and to raise social awareness but who are also very popular, I think of Dickens.

As a citizen and someone who was a judge on the constitutional law court for 18 years, I feel whenever I can raise my voice with the hope of being heard I need to do it, but I wouldn't assign a special wisdom and responsibility to writers.

If you want to be a director, work with writers and find different ways of telling stories with film, then do a course. This way you can consolidate what you've learnt and use the course to go further.

Gay writers now have both a sense of history and the fables that allows them to dwell in the realms of the ridiculous and at the same time talk seriously about things.

Scottish writers are particularly successful in the crime genre.

I am very lucky: not very many writers can say they genuinely like the film of their book. However, I do.

I came out of what we romance writers call The Romance Ghetto, because we get so little respect.

Comedians are sometimes resentful of their writers. Probably because it's hard for giant egos to admit you need anyone but yourself to be what you are.

There are some incredibly gifted writers in the world. You can count them on a hand. They're blessed, and they've worked at their craft, but there's very few.

There are certainly better writers and directors than me, but I have worked very hard to earn credibility within the business as a quality writer and a good director.

One of the good things about consulting is that you leave the writers' room for a couple of days, things progress, you come back, and you might have a fresher take.

Writers whose thoughts are expressed with clarity and precision are assumed by readers to be superficial. Where the meaning is obscured, then readers give more attention and consider the fruit of their labour more valuable

Solovyov's theories were to have a profound effect on a later generatio of symbolist writers that would include both Alexander Blok 1880–1921) and Andrei Bely (1880–1934). However, the first genuine "manifesto" of the new artistic and philosophical sensibilities is usually accredited to Dmitri Merezhkovsky

By the beginning of the 20th Century, Cannes and the coastal strip that winds its rocky way to Monaco was the winter resort for the rich, the Royals and a few well-heeled writers and artists, such as the impressionist painter Auguste Renoir.

I don't really believe in closure. That's something that writers talk about or people wished that they had.

As a writer, I tend to be drawn to marginal people - writers, poet-prophets, seers, eccentrics - who embody the deeper ambivalences of their societies and bear deeper witness to their world than the famous figures we are used to celebrating, or demonizing, in our histories.

I think I'm part of a generation of crime writers all of whom woke up independently and recoiled with horror at the fact that we'd chosen this very conservative genre.

The problem with themes is that writers don't realise they are themes until someone points them out.

I do seem to have a lot of family secrets in my novels. I guess I'm one of those writers who is often writing about the same sort of themes, but taking different angles on them.

I never really approach any project or story thinking of themes first or what a certain character 'represents.' Maybe other writers do, but for me, it just starts with the characters and a certain emotion I want to convey. It usually isn't until I get deeper into a book and look back a bit that I start to see the themes, etc.

Although psychoanalysis has influenced me personally, it has had curiously little influence on my writing. This may be because writers learn from other writers, not from theories.