Quotes About Writer

An actor can never voice his opinion through films. All an actor does is convey what the director and writer want to say. You are a mouthpiece of their ideas. Your ideas reflect only in your choice of movies.

It must inquire not merely about the circumstances of the time in general, but in particular about the writer's position with regard to these things, the interests and motives, the leading ideas of his literary activity.

I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.

I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans.

In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence.

I am of the opinion that I am not a political writer, and, moreover, that as far as true literature is concerned, there actually are no political writers. I think that my writing is no more political than ancient Greek theatre. I would have become the writer I am in any political regime.

Maybe I'm a serial regional writer. First here, then there, across the map.

I learned to be a regional writer by reading people like Flannery O'Connor. She was a huge influence.

What I do is I basically make records to please myself first and foremost, and so one of the most important things for me as a musician and a writer and a producer is to feel like there's always a sense of evolution and reinvention with each record.

I'm a fiction writer, and I do write essays, but I am not a poet. And I absolutely reject the phrase 'woman writer' as anti-feminist. I wrote an essay about this as far back as 1977, at the height of the neo-feminist movement.

Children's books are often seen as the poor relation of literature. But children are just as demanding as adult readers, if not more so. I should know. I'm a children's writer myself.

The French are pretty thin-skinned. The few times I mentioned a French writer in 'City Boy,' the relatives would ring up in high dudgeon. I once wrote a mocking review of Marguerite Duras in the 'New York Review of Books,' and good friends of mine in France got very angry.

Seattle's support system got me through those early, difficult years. It was a very funky, very friendly, very relaxed place that had it all for a writer.

In TV, you're a 'writer for hire.' That means you're trying to guess what your boss wants and delivering that story. There's a lot of spitballing. The big thing is 'breaking story,' which means coming up with a story. You do it by episode and put it all up on a board.

The writer catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.

I'm in love with the way that Ella Fitzgerald delivered a lyric. She would deliver a lyric with the kind of clarity that would make you wonder why it was written, and make you think about the writer. I think every writer hopes an Ella of any genre or anytime gets a hold of their work and works the song like that.

I'm an actor, and I want to play flawed characters, and I'm a writer that wants to write flawed characters, trying to let something out and hoping people relate through that or have fun experiencing the story.

I think self-doubt, as grim as it can be, makes me a better writer. Stasis and hubris would probably be the death knell for my career.

I find it hugely exciting to be dealing with another writer's language.

The first writer I developed a script with was John Hughes, and that was 'Mr. Mom.' That was my first feature film.

Having children changes you forever, as a writer and as a human being. I hope it's for the better on both counts, but I guess we'll see.

A humorist has to be taken seriously before he's considered a real writer.

A great writer is always like a foreigner in the language which he expresses himself, even if this is his native tongue. At the limit, he draws his strength from a mute and unknown minority that belongs only to him. He is a foreigner in his own language: he does not mix another language with his own language, he carves out a nonpreexistent foreign language within his own language. He makes the language itself scream, stutter, stammer, or murmur.

I was the embodiment of every writer's worst fear: a cliché.