Quotes About Writers

It is not easy to determine whether there are any who still adhere in good faith to the doctrine that traces back the depreciation of money to the activity of speculators. The doctrine is an indispensable instrument of the lowest form of demagogy; it is the resource of governments in search of a scapegoat. There are scarcely any independent writers nowadays who defend it; those who support it are paid to do so.

What is called "orthodox" economics is in most countries barred from the universities and is virtually unknown to the leading statesmen, politicians, and writers. The

In reviewing the determinants of the rate of interest, writers emphasize over and over again that it is not the greater or smaller quantity of money that is of importance, but the greater or smaller quantity of other economic goods.

For the narrative to exist, so that it could be read and reread even if I was taken away. Stories outlive their writers all the time. We know plenty about Goethe and Charles Dickens from what they chose to tell, even though they have been dead for years.

When Ted Williams was here, inducted into the Hall of Fame 37 years ago, he said he must have earned it, because he didn't win it because of his friendship with the writers. I guess in that way, I'm proud to be in this company that way.

When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.", The New Yorker, July 7, 1986]

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.

Our principal writers have nearly all been fortunate in escaping regular education.

In general, writers shouldn't be killed for what they write, though I can think of exceptions.

In some articles written about me, writers have said I'm a link between the old and the new, and I think, in a certain sense, that's legitimate.

I love the idea of the literary salons in France where artists and writers would all come and talk and drink absinthe.

Writers of literature make very little money.

Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so. For it must be very lonely being dead.

I had realized that while books are extraordinary, writers themselves are no more or less special than anyone else.

And everyday I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so. For it must be very lonely being dead.

And everyday I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs?

American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous.

Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.

Too many people, once they reach a comfortable position in life, forget the important role writers like Hammett — who dropped out of high school in his first year to work supporting his family — or Howard — struggling to break into the pulps with absolutely no professional advice and little encouragement — play in literature, just as they tend to ignore the role the working man and woman play in society.

As the congress began, OGPU found nine copies of an anonymous leaflet addressed to foreign delegates, apparently composed by a group of Soviet writers: . . . We Russian writers remind one of prostitutes in a brothel, with just one difference, that they trade their bodies and we trade our souls; just as they have no way out of the brothel, except death by starvation, neither have we. . . .

Back in August, I wrote a post about the supposed race to the bottom with ebooks, refuting some nonsense written by an establishment bonehead. This meme won't die. People are still convinced that new ebooks are going to be priced at ten cents, and writers will starve, and this will cause a second Great Depression where banks will close and people will be forced to buy Kindles with food stamps, and then the earth will enter another ice age where all the bunnies will freeze to death.

It's the obligation of all writers to shoulder up against the wall of the permissible and shove . Writers must shove no matter how large the obstacle and without concern for the strength of those pushing back from the other side. This shoving is made more difficult by the fact that those pushing back are very often the same shovers who moved the wall to where it now stands--they nudged it forward as far as they could stomach it, and cannot tolerate a millimeter more.

Screenwriters? Schmucks with Underwoods.

Every time I make American film I just trust American directors and American writers.