The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief - call it what you will - than any book ever written. It has emptied more churches than all the counter-attractions of cinema, motor-bicycle and golf course.
A. A. Milne
To have a part that is written for you certainly helps an actor.
A. J. Bowen
I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.
A. S. Byatt
Biographies are no longer written to explain or explore the greatness of the great. They redress balances, explore secret weaknesses, demolish legends.
I developed a mania for Fitzgerald - by the time I'd graduated from high school I'd read everything he'd written. I started with 'The Great Gatsby' and moved on to 'Tender Is the Night,' which just swept me away. Then I read 'This Side of Paradise,' his novel about Princeton - I literally slept with that book under my pillow for two years.
A. Scott Berg
Any sufficiently badly-written science is indistinguishable from magic.
Aaron Allston
If you look on Amazon - if you do a search for personal finance, there are literally 20,000 books written on personal finance, and there's no real reason for it. I mean, personal finance is pretty simple.
Aaron Patzer
The rules are all in a sixty-four-page pamphlet by Aristotle called 'Poetics.' It was written almost three thousand years ago, but I promise you, if something is wrong with what you're writing, you've probably broken one of Aristotle's rules.
Aaron Sorkin
Any time you get two people in a room who disagree about anything, the time of day, there is a scene to be written. That's what I look for.
I've never written anything that I haven't wanted to write again. I want to, and still am, writing 'A Few Good Men' again. I didn't know what I was doing then, and I'm still trying to get it right. I would write 'The Social Network' again if they would let me, I'd write 'Moneyball' again. I would write 'The West Wing' again.
I have a lot of respect for people who are great at ad-libbing and for writers and directors who are able to create a scene in which that works. Judd Apatow is fantastic at it. But as an audience member, I like the sound of something that's been written - I like it to sound written.
I have all of the Apple products. Everything I've ever written, I've written on a Mac. My first computer, my roommates and I chipped in, and we got that first Macintosh - 128K. It had as much memory as a greeting card that plays music.
People lament that there's no roles being written for South Asian or Muslim characters. But their parents don't want their children to go into the entertainment field. You don't get it both ways.
Aasif Mandvi
The pleasure from acting comes from having great writing to work with. If it's well written and the character is interesting, then, as an actor, that's the raw material I need.
There are some different things I'm writing and developing, but I don't know where they'll go. They're fun stuff that I would be in and are written in my voice, for me.
Abby Elliott
You have days where you're trying to be your best, and you say something, and you see it being written in three different places and in a way that you didn't mean for it to be interpreted. But you just try to do your best. You kind of just have to let everything else roll off your back.
Abby Huntsman
Each country its cost analysis is going to be different. So what we are you seeing in Syria, for example, is different than what's going on in Jordan. The maps are being rewritten.
Abdullah II of Jordan
When there is stuff being written about your family and people ask you questions which are very personal in nature, it makes you defensive and almost makes you angry.
Abhay Deol
It would be great to read a script, which is an action script uniquely written so that it doesn't cost an arm or a leg because we are now accustomed to seeing action in the superhero form.
In my own work, I have written about how our public sector bank officials avoid making any new lending decisions - because lending always exposes them to some (infinitesimal) risk of being blamed for the loan going wrong.
Abhijit Banerjee
I think theater is very much my natural home. But the truth is that the older I've got, and the more I've written film and television, I find it incredibly hard to write theater.
Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap - let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.
Biographies, as generally written, are not only misleading but false... In most instances, they commemorate a lie and cheat posterity out of the truth.
I love to read poetry but I haven't written anything that I'm willing to show anybody.
I'm always looking, as an actor, for activities. I think it's far more interesting to watch what people do than what they say. You always want to watch behavior, because the dialogue as written by our illustrious leaders is great. Eminently playable.
It's bad writing, however naturalistic it's written, that's where you have to do your best acting.
My own writing has perhaps more of an American flavor than a British one, but that's because the stories I've so far written have needed it. 'Empire State,' 'Seven Wonders' and 'The Age Atomic' are all very place-centric, where the setting itself is almost a character. But there is a universality to story that isn't just limited to science fiction.
It is to be regretted that few persons who have arrived at any degree of eminence or fame, have written Memorials of themselves, at least such as have embraced their private as well as their public life.
Democratic politicians have disliked things I've written, Republican politicians... if they all love you, you might as well be driving a Good Humor truck.
Another thing that's quite different in writing a book as a practicing newspaperman is that if you look at what you've written the next morning and you think you didn't get it quite right, you can fix it.
Most of the stuff that people look at on Quora today was not written in the last month. You write something really good, and maybe it's the definitive answer on the Internet for the next 10 years. Maybe it's only a year, but not like a tweet, where it's only relevant for a day or a week.
The act of song writing and recording became one and the same to me; because I essentially recorded everything I did from the day I began trying to write songs. I've always had a lot to say. I'd always written poems.
I've always written about stuff I have gone through.
I can say that on the record 'Transit of Venus,' there's maybe one or two songs that actually do come from my heart, but a lot of songs have been written just for radio and for fans, you know, to relate to.
Learning to read the Bible in the light of the times in which it was written is critical. Reading it uncritically, without understanding the cultural and historical setting of the text, leaves us forced to accept scientific and sociological norms of the ancient Near East from 3,000 years ago.
The earliest stories in Genesis were not written to tell primeval history. They were written to tell readers about themselves and about God.
Learning to read the Bible in the light of the times in which it was written is critical.
Some Christians see the biblical teaching on homosexuality as reflecting the culture and times in which the Bible was written and not reflecting God's eternal perspective on homosexual people. Others believe these scriptures represent God's timeless will for how human beings practice intimacy.
I think the tradition of well-written history hasn't been squashed out of the academic world as much in Britain as it has in the United States.
But, in North Korea, it's just the opposite. There's one story. It's written by the Kim regime. And 23 million people are conscripted to be secondary characters. There, as a youth, your aptitude towards certain jobs is measured, and the rest of your life is dictated, whether you'll be a fisherman or a farmer or an opera singer.
Imagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years. Imagine a place where not a single person has read a book that is truly about the character at its center.
Many of the songs on Undertow were written at the time Opiate came out.
I've written repeatedly about the quest by corporations everywhere to transform themselves digitally.
Global affairs consultant Ian Bremmer, founder of the Eurasia Group, has started a newsletter called 'Signal,' aimed at millennials. For years, Bremmer has written a maddeningly all-lowercase yet fascinating weekly newsletter on geopolitics.
I love Billy Joel. I cry sometimes when I hear 'The Stranger.' 'You May Be Right' may be one of the greatest songs ever written.
Anytime I audition for something, it's always a question of whether or not the people I'm auditioning for understand I'm an improviser and I like to do that, and if they like that or if they just want someone who's going to do what's written.
I generally prefer to come in to the studio with a fully written song and then work on the arrangement with the band. Sometimes even the arrangements are pretty much already worked out in my head, but other times we experiment.
I haven't written adult fiction, but I do not sugarcoat grief - or what I expect grief to be.
I talk about any number of things on my Facebook space. Politics. Current events. The writing life. The latest tempests in a teapot centering on fandom. Daily doings from my own life. My cats, for crying out loud. Flights of humorous fantasy. Books, both those I've read and those I've written. Movies. And occasionally, TV shows.
I've always written down how I feel.
