Quotes About Writers

I went to Cambridge University. I took a number of baths - and a degree in English. I worried a lot about girls and what had happened to my bike. Later I became I writer and worked on a lot of things that were almost incredibly successful but in fact just failed to see the light of day. Other writers will know what I mean.

People often ask where I get my ideas from, sometimes as often as eighty-seven times a day. This is a well-known hazard for writers, and the correct response to the question is first to breathe deeply, steady your heartbeat, fill your mind with peaceful, calming images of birdsong and buttercups in spring meadows, and then try to say, It's very interesting you ask that... before breaking down and start to whimper uncontrollably.

for sale. Various glowing advertisements of it had appeared in the papers. Then came the first bald statement that it had been bought—by a Mr. Owen. After that the rumours of the gossip writers had

Ancient writers, we have seen, more often mention exorcism than anything else as a cause of conversion to Christianity.

Peaky' is a very personal thing for me because it's based on stories that I was told as a kid by my parents. At the very beginning, I tried to have other writers involved but it just didn't work.

There are a few writers whose lives and personalities are so large, so fascinating, that there's no such thing as a boring biography of them - you can read every new one that comes along, good or bad, and be caught up in the story all over again.

When a country is strong... it accepts any dose of pessimism from its writers.

It's too bad that there aren't as many light comedies around in the movies as there were when I was making pictures like 'The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.' The boys are just not writing them. Many writers are more serious now than they used to be, and that's showing up in all phases of entertainment.

When the 'Guardian' is commissioning writers to write obituary pieces about you and your career... it doesn't get much nastier than that. And you've just got to go, 'It doesn't actually matter.'

When you're doing a pilot, you're doing it in this bubble that almost works against the creative impulse. You don't have time to get to know the actors first, and you have three writers, as opposed to a room full of writers.

There are a lot more female writers wanting to direct their own material and hopefully will be given the opportunity.

Warhol was definitely an inspiration when I was younger. I wouldn't quantify his sort of influence. I've been influenced by nature and science, and I've been influenced by people like Ernst and Rauschenberg, Cornell and Bosch and Bruegel, by writers like Haruki Murakami to Pablo Neruda to Artaud.

Writers are not obliged to deal with current events, but it happens that the big story of our times - the al-Qaida attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - is being told in some of the greatest books of our time.

I went to Washington to ask for a little residual payment for the people who had written films in the early, early days, people who never got any residuals on tapes or anything at all.

Fear is felt by writers at every level. Anxiety accompanies the first word they put on paper and the last.

Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

When a woman enters my house, a tunnel of books welcomes her, a carnival of heroes bounces from every corner, and I lead her straight through the welcoming applause of writers and mice.

I beg your pardon, sir, said the Frenchman. I am not a coloniser. Well, let's talk Algeria then. Let's talk about your culture and your celebrated writers.

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.

So, we come out to Los Angeles. And we met with every network. We met with show runners, directors, writers, everything. And what we had an idea for, they didn't like. And what they had an idea for, we didn't like. So, we went home.

You have to be careful what you say in front of comedy writers because they will absolutely make fun of it in the next episode.

I grew up around writers, and there was always a romance to them. They were charming. They would tell their stories of what they were working on, over the table.

There's one thing about TV that I really think is true. If you find the right cast and the right writers, and you got some chemistry going, even if a show is taking a little while to find an audience, if you keep it there, that audience will find it. Because that's what happened with 'Cheers.'

I think that what's unique about sci-fi - at least from the view of a lot of Chinese writers - is that sci-fi is least-rooted in the particular culture that they're writing from.