Quotes About Writers

Today, there are more opportunities for writers in terms of access to larger success, but it's more difficult to publish a literary novel in the lower ranges. In other words, you almost have to hit a home run. You can hit a triple, maybe, but nobody's interested in a single.

Don't let your characters tell you what to do. They can be pushy. Some writers say that they create characters and then just sort of follow them around through the narrative. I think that these writers are out of their minds.

Comedians are really writers who don't have pens and pencils about them, but they riff.

Writers can feel pretty powerless in the big corporate world of publishing, but sometimes our greatest power is the ability to say 'no.'

Getting enough sleep makes us better family members, friends, lovers, drivers, writers, cooks, and pretty much everything else that is of importance in our lives.

On Memorial Day, I don't want to only remember the combatants. There were also those who came out of the trenches as writers and poets, who started preaching peace, men and women who have made this world a kinder place to live.

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.

I'm quite sure that most writers would sustain real poetry if they could, but it takes devotion and talent.

Writers want to summarize: What does this mean? What did we learn from this? That's a very 19th-century way of thinking about art, because it assumes that it should make our lives better or teach us something.

The paradox of modernism is, writers make the decision to work with the continuous present, and to work with... stream of consciousness, as it's called, for emotional reasons, and the main emotional reason is verisimilitude. I mean, this is what surprises people: Life is not in the simple past.

Between us and the writers, it was comedy hour the whole time. We could hardly get through it.

Ironically, Latin American countries, in their instability, give writers and intellectuals the hope that they are needed.

There were all us baby boomers who had a grammar school education, started to learn, then went on the pill, the whole thing, and so there are today a lot more women writers, editors, producers, and so a lot more women's stories. God, the BBC's practically run by women.

I have been fortunate to have worked with immensely talented writers and directors who have had faith in me. There's been very little hard work but a lot of learning. I have learnt from each of my characters, and I think that's rather amazing.

While apartheid was in operation, the set-up was a gift for writers if you were looking for a big theme.

The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers.

There aren't enough good roles for strong women. I wish we had more female writers. Most of the female characters you see in films today are the 'poor heartbroken girl.'

Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations.

As an inspiration to the author, I do not think the cat can be over-estimated. He suggests so much grace, power, beauty, motion, mysticism. I do not wonder that many writers love cats; I am only surprised that all do not.

I think everyone's a little afraid of being part of a trend, because you get compared to each other. Writers tend to have a lot of camaraderie, and when you're constantly compared to someone else, it kind of damages that camaraderie, but I think this is a great trend. I'm honored to be a part of it in many ways.

The deaf culture is portrayed very accurately on 'Switched at Birth' because the writers did the opposite of the norm. They did their homework before portraying anything on television.

Offhand, the only North American writers I can think of who have come from a background of rural poverty and gone on to write about it have been Negroes.

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

Russia, France, Germany and China. They revere their writers. America is still a frontier country that almost shudders at the idea of creative expression.