Quotes About Writers

What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.

One thing that's always helped quell my writerly anxieties is seeking out interviews with writers I admire.

I think my interviews were much better than what some of the writers wrote. I just wanted the truth out.

I'm not intimidated by other actors at all - or directors. I don't care who they are. But I am intimidated by writers. I hold them in the highest esteem.

Most of us can now record a whole series with the click of a button. We all have DVD players, and the rise of the DVD box-set means we watch this stuff in two, three-hour sessions. So there is this real appetite out there for lengthy, pretty intricate drama. All that is great news for writers.

In many senses, 'Borgen' was a very democratic show. I was always invited to hear the writers' thoughts for the next episodes and allowed to comment on them.

There are a few Irish writers who have a very strong influence on me, especially on the 'Take Me to Church' EP.

I think coldness is chic among writers, and particularly ironic coldness. What is absolutely not allowable is sadness. People will do anything rather than to acknowledge that they are sad.

You fall into a black hole, and you are irretrievably gone from the universe. That finality has made it irresistible to writers.

It is the responsibility of filmmakers, actors and writers, who have the freedom to do the kind of work they want to do irrespective of whether it is good or not.

I, too, am interested in identity and Islam, which is what people expect of us. But one must not write what is expected. It's important for North African writers to show they have other things to say.

For some reason, it seems like pop writers, it's like they just get worse or something over time. And then you're really jealous of movie directors whose careers seem to grow and they'll be 70 years old and still doing these incredible jobs. I'm going to reverse that, I hope.

The Jews are an artistic people. It's clear from the music, the actors, the writers. They are just artists. In the early part of the 20th century, when they first came over, they had no money, but they still went to theater. The theater and education were the two biggest things in their lives.

Some of my biggest commercial musical influences would be people like Merle Haggard, George Jones, of course, Johnny Cash. People that wrote and sang their own stuff, I really admired.

Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

Intellectuals, freelance writers, investigative journalists, and midlist novelists are the analog to the family farmers, who have always struggled but simply can't compete in this transformed economy.

Al fin y al cabo, los escritores son criaturas raras, y más si intentan ganarse la vida escribiendo.

Of course, in fairness, I must remind you of this: that we writers are the most lily-livered of all craftsmen. We expect more, for the most peewee efforts, than any other people.

The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity.

As this is one of those deep observations which very few readers can be supposed capable of making themselves, I have thought proper to lend them my assistance; but this is a favour rarely to be expected in the course of my work. Indeed, I shall seldom or never so indulge him, unless in such instances as this, where nothing but the inspiration with which we writers are gifted can possibly enable anyone to make the discovery.

Contemplando el pasado, parece que siempre leí en posición incómoda. (Que es la forma en que escriben la mayoría de los escritores, según compruebo). Pero lo leído penetró. Lo importante es, y debo recalcarlo, que leía sin desviar la atención con todas mis facultades que poseía.

So when I got the chance to do my first talk show, 50 years ago last month, I never had any writers. There was no budget - it was just me and the camera and my friend who was the director. I talked about what I'd done that week.

So there was a constant flow and a thin line there between reality and television and yes, much of what I was experiencing in my real life was also what was going on in the television show to the extent that I had to take writers' advice and from the counselors around.

I think writers have to be proactive: they've got to use new technology and social media. Yes, it's hard to get noticed by traditional publishers, but there's a great deal of opportunity out there if you've got the right story.