Quotes About Writers

True crime has long been a passion for me, but I'm also a sucker for biographies, particularly of politicians, writers, or Hollywood icons.

That's what fascinates me about these writers' retreats: You're in these small spaces with small groups of people, and all of the sudden, the spotlight is shining on you harder than it normally is.

All the sudden, I was part of the 'No Man's Land' thing, and there was a bundle of core writers for that, but somewhere along the line, I became the go-to guy after that initial arc.

After coming toward the completion of Queen Sugar,' I had the opportunity to speak with the executives and head writers at Days of our Lives.'

Certain governments are suggesting that bloggers and tweeters aren't 'real' writers and, so, don't merit protection. A writer is anyone from a Nobel laureate to a debut blogger. They all get PEN's attention.

Few writers in history have ever been 'politically correct' (a notion that rapidly changes in any case), and there's no reason to imagine that gay writers will ever suit their readers, especially since that readership is splintered into ghettos within ghettos.

I have been very, very fortunate on this show, on 'Suits,' where the writers do come to me, and they ask my comfort level and, if they want to push an envelope in a certain direction, if I'm okay with that. And, by and large, I am. I think it's important.

What's more important to 'SNL': comedy or buzz? To the writers, players and guest hosts, it's probably the former; to Lorne Michaels and the suits at NBC, it's ultimately probably the latter.

was a melancholy introvert who declined to join in philosophical discussions.)   The Concord circle of sympathetically-minded thinkers, writers, and social activists became known as Transcendentalists. What exactly is Transcendentalism? That's the question Emerson set out to answer at Boston's Masonic Temple in 1842. In addition to defining his own philosophy, this lecture planted the seeds of the modern self-help and personal development movements.

I am madness maddened when it comes to books, writers, and the great granary silos where their wits are stored.

The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. That's my definition anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her.

One of the characteristic aspects of our time is that we fear the future. We fear the unholy powers unleashed by science. We fear the absolute power of states more tyrannical than the tyrannies of the past because they strive to rule men's minds as well as their bodies. And writers, who can imagine the dreadful details of such a future more vividly than the rest of us, write books capable of troubling our sleep indefinitely. . . .

Los buenos escritores tocan a menudo la vida. Los mediocres la rozan rápidamente. Los malos la violan y la abandonan a las moscas.

What a joke, Simon, life is. "From vanity we buy lenses that see all and so lose everything! "And by giving up some small bit-piece of so-called wisdom, reality, truth, we gain back an entirety of life! Who does not know this? Writers do! Intuited novels are far more 'true' than all your scribbled data-fact reportage in the history of the world!

In Communist countries they take writers very seriously—so seriously that they often kill them.

the Revolution did not produce a single piece of imaginative literature that has endured. The generation of writers who came of age during the Revolution breathed in a supercharged ideological atmosphere; they pressed themselves and their art into the service of their country, only to discover that a republic could be as demanding a patron as a wealthy prince.

My governing principle as a critic is to call attention solely to books and writers that merit such attention, and to avoid whenever possible reviewing books "negatively" except in those instances in which the "negative" is countered by an admiring consideration of earlier books by the same author.

In this age of censorship, I mourn the loss of books that will never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced-writers' voices, teachers' voices, students' voices-and all because of fear.

I have always had a soft spot for Canadian writers. There is something expansive and yet intimate about their songs, broad as the northwestern plains and as comfortable as having a cup of coffee out on a pinewood porch with a friend. From Ed McCurdy to Gordon Lightfoot and Leonard Cohen, from Joni Mitchell to Ian and Sylvia Tyson, hearing their songs is hearing the truth. And, as the man says, "when you've heard the truth, the rest is just cheap whiskey.

Are writers reporters, prophets, crazies, entertainers, preachers, judges, what?

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and molars. Sydney Smith was a "molar."

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.