Quotes About Writer

A few hours after the news broke about the death of crime writer Donald E. Westlake, a newspaper asked me to write a tribute. In short order I did so, calling attention to his decades-long career, both under his own name and that of his primary alter ego, Richard Stark, who introduced the unsentimental antihero-heister Parker to the literary canon.

I am a writer. Therefore. I am not sane.

But what I hope for from a book - either one that I write or one that I read - is transparency. I want the story to shine through. I don't want to think of the writer.

To be the kind of writer you want to be, you must first be the kind of thinker you want to be.

But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.

Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.

All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool.

I was reading some Raymond Carver. I really liked how he did that 'slice of life' thing. Because I'm not much of a reader I end up finding out about these things a long time after other people.

It would be too glib, not a hundred per cent true, to say that my father's career as a banker was what made me a writer. But it would be slightly true, and it was certainly the case that his work as a banker made me see that the trade-offs people make between their work and their lives are often badly skewed.

Few things are more painful than being a successful writer born in a small country with an impenetrable language.

I guess you go back to the old writer's adage that when they do your stuff in Hollywood, you smile sweetly upon your credit - if there is one - and enjoy the show.

It is customary for the writer to sneer that Hollywood has traduced their book. Well, I adore my film.

'SNL' doesn't have a traditional writer's room. On Monday, there's the pitch meeting with the guest, and I played that like it was stand-up.

The British are actually a lot more appreciative of the comic. In Canada, if you're perceived as a comic writer, there's a real snobbery, and you can't be serious. You're not a big hitter.

I believe in a world where there are no heroes, and I've read and know humanity a lot. There are moments that I admire in a person courage, intellect, hard work. These are the qualities I admire in an intellectual, in a writer, and there are so many people who have these things.

I had many different careers early on. I knew I wanted to be a writer. But, like so many people, I didn't know how to be one - other than just do it. I didn't know what form it would take.

You'd quit long before she ever would." This stopped me. "What makes you say that?" "Jennie has an agenda. You're still equivocating. I watched you observing, taking notes. Hugging the sidelines. Not sure if this is your milieu—just like you were in seminary: never sure if you should be a minister or a writer, so not committing to either." "I still wonder if I made the right choice," I said. "But am I really that obvious?

To struggle against censorship, whatever its nature, and whatever the power under which it exists, is my duty as a writer, as are calls for freedom of the press. I am a passionate supporter of that freedom, and I consider that if any writer were to imagine that he could prove he didn't need that freedom, then he would be like a fish affirming in public that it didn't need water.

I love 'The Stand;' I read it when I was a kid - it was one of my favorite books when I was growing up. I love Stephen King; I think he's a remarkable writer.

Bookstores never seem to know where to put me on the shelves. But I do. I love my genre and I love those writers, so I am happy to be considered a crime writer. That's what I consider myself.

It's fun because I really do love meeting new people. Comedy can be so different from show to show and from writer to writer and actor to actor. People don't set out to make a bad show.

I like the idea of a writer being haunted by his own creation, especially if the writer resents the way the character defines him.

Feelings aren't facts and opinions aren't crimes and aesthetics still count—and the reason I'm a writer is to present an aesthetic, things that are true without always having to be factual or immutable.