Quotes About Writers

There is an enormous shadow industry of scammers and amateurs who prey on aspiring writers, who divert people from the real publishing industry into this shadow world of vanity publishing and fee-charging agents.

I'm always interested in what classic crime writers got into when they stepped away from the genre stuff they were known for. That's why 'Mildred Pierce' is like noir without any real crime.

The requests for blurbs seem to come in waves. I'm not sure what precipitates them. I think it must be excruciating for editors to draft those elaborate letters asking for a blurb, and I know it's torturous for us writers to ask directly. But publishers encourage us to. Rock and a hard place.

I've been trying to find women writers for my staff for a while now and I have three women on my staff and three guys so it's pretty equal. I don't know why that is. It's been the same thing for a while. It's hard for female comedians to stand out. That's weird. That's a shame.

Soaps are a double-edged sword. There can be prejudice from some writers and producers who feel you will lower the currency of their work if you've been in one. You have to rise above such ludicrous prejudice.

With every episodic, there's a learning curve where writers try to find the voice of the characters by way of the actors. Many details are found along the way. On 'Caprica,' although the franchise already existed, we were creating an entirely new world full of new characters.

There's exceptional work being done on television. Some of our great writers are writing for television. When you have things to choose from, you typically go after the writing - unless you're going after the money. There are fewer opportunities in film to make money with good writing, unless you're an action hero.

In fiction, there happens to be a long history of creative engagement with marginality, with the very human components of society that others don't want to think about, from writers such as Dostoyevsky, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud to Genet and Sarrazin and right on up to Norman Mailer.

It has always been very difficult for writers to survive commercially in India because the market was so small. But that's not true at all any more. It's one of the world's fastest growing and most vibrant markets for books, especially in English.

Most writers like to maintain some sort of anonymity. For me, making videos was an assault.

It's funny. People often compare me to other humor essayists. They're usually quite nice comparisons; I will accept those gladly. But I am always sort of appalled at the idea of being lumped with other, more chick-y female writers. And the truth is probably that neither comparison is accurate.

You have to have a first job to learn how to act, do interviews, pose for photo shoots, and negotiate how you'll say lines with writers. My first network show, 'Cavemen,' just happened to be one that was culturally reviled.

It's hard to tell writers, especially in movies, that words are secondary. Behavior is important.

Indie bookstores love writers as much as they love readers, and there is something about a community store, where you walk in, you feel known, and the delight in books is just infectious.

As far as Irish writers being great, I think the fact that there have been two languages in Ireland for a very long time; there has obviously been a shared energy between those two languages.

TV is the place for writers to live. This is where you have creative control and you're constantly writing. 'Twilight' had almost a TV schedule to it. I was constantly working on these projects. There was not a whole lot of lull but I've gone onto other feature projects that's like, 'Okay, I'll get back to you on notes.'

I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print.

The first writers are first and the rest, in the long run, nowhere but in anthologies.

You can't really claim too much ownership of your character. They really do belong to the writers, and in many ways, you're just their puppet.

I'm an author. And writers write books. And writing books is a full-time career.

A lot of writers dwell on their relationships with their mothers, but only a few are worth reading.

I was aware that there is an expectation that writers inevitably falter at this stage, that they fail to live up to the promise of their first successful book, that the next book never pleases the way the prior one did. It simply increased my sense of being challenged.

Nicholas Sparks and John Green are very different writers.

The most thankless job in our film industry is that of lyricists. Next in the list are writers. These two don't get any recognition at all, whereas they have the most important roles in every film today.