Quotes About Writer

When he describes woman, each writer discloses his general ethics and the special idea he has of himself; and in her he often betrays also the gap between his world view and his egotistical dreams.

The novelist is like the conductor of an orchestra, his back to the audience, his face invisible, summoning the experience of music for the people he cannot see. The writer as conductor also gets to compose the music and play all of the instruments, a task less formidable than it seems.

Writers of nonfiction have the right—perhaps even the responsibility—to access the wonders of the writer's craft to make their work interesting and enjoyable.

It is (to describe it figuratively) as if an author were to make a slip of the pen, and as if this clerical error became conscious of being such. Perhaps this was no error but in a far higher sense was an essential part of the whole exposition. It is, then, as if this clerical error were to revolt against the author, out of hatred for him, were to forbid him to correct it, and were to say, No, I will not be erased, I will stand as a witness against thee, that thou art a very poor writer.

As a fiction writer, one of things you learn is God lives in specificity. You know, human kindness is increased as we pursue specificity.

I am, of course, a frustrated rock star - I'd much rather be a rock star than a writer. Or own a record shop. Still, it's not a bad life, is it? You just sit at a computer and make stuff up.

The writer's first affinity is not to a loyalty, a tradition, a morality, a religion, but to life itself, and to its representation in language.

I'm not really an autobiographical writer, though I use lots of stuff from my life to make my stories seem real. But when I actually write about myself, I get very confused.

You have to live a life to become a writer.

The challenge for a nonfiction writer is to achieve a poetic precision using the documents of truth but somehow to make people and places spring to life as if the reader was in their presence.

The life of a writer is directed by a mad impulsive muse, that can tell them to cancel all their storyline: a creative divergent devil.

Like most actors, she was hysterical when unemployed and resentful when appearing every night to full houses. She also entertained the common belief that a writer is only working when he can be seen head down at his desk. Why are you drinking/dreaming/farting/fornicating instead of making typewriter noises?

I would always need a northern bite in my blood if I were to survive the writer's recurrent ailment: exhaustion. A jumbo Judy Garland at five in the morning would not ultimately nourish me as much as a plate of jellied eels in Margate. I felt a stabbing wave of homesickness.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs." [ Time Magazine , October 31, 1977]

When I first became a detective I had tried solving crimes the way mystery writers do: coming up with the solution to the crime first, then working back to the point where you don't know what the hell is going on. But for some reason every time I tried that I ended up locked in a closet.

I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.

There are angels in Hell," the horror writer told him, "not just in Heaven. Indeed, the angels of Hell may be the more numerous.

It was the yearning she related to. Shriver seemed to understand the specific human pain of wanting and pushing away at the same time. It left her with a gorgeous ache, and when she turned the last page of the book and closed the cover, Norah's connection to the writer felt absolute. It was a breathless, consuming rapture....

Când talentul unui scriitor se epuizeaz?, inepÅ£iile unui duhovnic umplu golul inspiraÅ£iei.

Ceea ce-l deosebeÅŸte pe gînditor de scriitor e faptul c? gînditorul nu se apuc? s? scrie decît atunci cînd are ceva de spus. (Am formulat mai mult o dorin??, decît o constatare.)

Pobre del escritor que no cultive su megalomanía, que la vea menguar sin reaccionar. Pronto se dará cuenta de que uno no se vuelve normal impunemente.

We should keep to a single language, and deepen our knowledge of it at every opportunity. For a writer, gossiping with a concierge in his own is much more profitable than arguing with a scholar in a foreign tongue.

I'm a pretty autobiographical writer. I like a high ratio of true events to made-up events or rearranged events. I've always felt that if you think you can find a way to tell the truth and keep the fictional flux going, it's at least a good idea to try, because very often the truth is more interesting than the posed picture, the tableau. The messiness of truth is a useful corrective.

In the theatre the playwright is at least the equal partner of the performers, but in film the writer is shouldered aside by director, actor, producer and editor, who together transform the printed word into something far more glamorous and evocative.