Quotes About Insight

When you are interviewing someone, don't just write down what he says. Ask yourself: Does this guy remind you of someone? What does the room feel like? Notice smells, voice inflection, neighborhoods you pass through. Be a cinematographer.

I read a lot, I write a lot, and I have conversations with people I think are intelligent and wise.

The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

Studying psychology is fun because you're always looking for the same things I think a writer should be looking for, which is the story behind the story.

I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very thoroughly.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

The writer is the visionary of his people... He anticipates, he warns.

I love historical fiction because there's a literal truth, and there's an emotional truth, and what the fiction writer tries to create is that emotional truth.

My favorite writer is Alice Munro. It's simply amazing how well she captures entire lifetimes in a single short story.

Sometimes there's something that a writer doesn't see or a producer doesn't see when he's looking at a shot.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

A writer's job is to give the reader a larger vision of the world.

Clark Gregg and I are around the same age. He has been an actor and is a writer. But with a first-time director, there is a way to talk about things they might not know. Because Clark was an actor, though, he knew more about the process than most first-time directors.

I mean, truly, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and if you can't spot that CM Punk is magic from the moment he walks in the door, then you're reading a playbook from an antiquated writer.

So much of my own life inspires what I write. Whether it's work, family, friends, motherhood, I am a writer who tends to write what she knows. In 'Revenge Wears Prada,' a great deal of my own life finds its way into the book.

I've matured as a writer and human being. I've got some wisdom under my belt.

George Orwell is a pinnacle writer, for his combination of moral insight and literary writing.

Limited points of view let the writer dispense - and the reader gather - information from various corners of the story. It all becomes a kind of dance, with the writer guiding the reader through the various twists and turns. The challenge is keeping readers in step, while still managing to surprise.

A great writer requires a great biography, and a great biography must tell the truth.

And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.

I'm not the sort of writer who can walk into a party and take a look around, see who's sleeping with whom and go home and write a novel about society. It's not the way I work.