Quotes About Interpretation

If you lined up 10 writers and asked them to write a movie about Steve Jobs, you'd get 10 very different movies.

I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of people close to them or lives they have heard about as the raw material for their creativity.

Fantasy is fantasy. It's fiction. It's not meant to be a textbook. I don't believe in letting research overwhelm the fiction. That's a danger of science fiction in particular, as opposed to fantasy. A lot of writers forget that what they're doing is supposed to be art.

You know, actors say, 'There are no bad roles, there are only bad actors.' Well, comedians, because they're also writers, believe that there are in fact bad roles.

It is certain, indeed, that the sacred writers were apt to make great allowances for people with empty stomachs, and though I am well aware that the present profane ones think this very reprehensible, I venture to agree with the sacred writers.

Writers are outsiders. Even when we seem like insiders, we're outsiders. We have to be. Our noses pressed to the glass, we notice everything. We mull and interpret. We store away clues, details that may be useful to us later.

Translated poetry filled the no-man's-land between my own work and other writers', and I found this fascinating to explore.

Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.

All I can say is that I am not one of those writers who want 100% of their book in the film. I recognize that film is a different medium and the filmmaker must have the right to bring some new elements to the table, provided the soul of the book is preserved.

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

It's hard to tell writers, especially in movies, that words are secondary. Behavior is important.

You can't really claim too much ownership of your character. They really do belong to the writers, and in many ways, you're just their puppet.

Science fiction in particular is often assumed to be about the future, or about some abstract technological or philosophical idea, or just about 'adventure,' but writers can't build worlds out of nothing. We use bits and pieces of the real world to assemble our fictional ones.

There are times when the writers ask us to improvise. Sometimes the animators are inspired by what you do, and sometimes you are inspired by what the animators do.

I discovered Einstein said the same thing about his celebrated theories of relativity that writers say about their work when he said he didn't have any feelings of personal possession of these ideas. Once they were out there, they came from somewhere else. And that's exactly the feeling when you write. You don't feel possessive about it.

I like to capture the spirit of what the writers intended but find my own nuances. That comes from jazz - the invention and freeness within a structure.

Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.

Ilike ideas writers have that I might not have written. Writers are there for a reason... to write for me.

I don't know if she should worry too much, I mean some of our greatest writers have had movies made of their books, lots of Hemingway novels were turned into movies, it doesn't hurt the book.

I've discovered just how symbiotic the relationship is between writers, directors and actors. They ask the same questions and strip down texts in exactly the same way.

I think that there are fiction writers for whom that works well. I could never do it. I feel as if, by the time I see that it's a poem, it's almost written in my head somewhere.

Anyone who claims to be good at lying is obviously bad at lying. Thus - as a writer myself - I cannot comment on whether or not writers are exceptionally good liars, because whatever I said would actually mean its complete opposite.

Recipe writers hate to write about heat. They despise it. Because there aren't proper words for communicating what should be done with it.

Writers let themselves be enticed by the language.