A writer wants something more than money for his work: he wants permanence.
A. A. Milne
In a time of crisis, there is rational tendency to turn to the writer.
A. B. Yehoshua
World War II was a trauma that paralysed writers. It was something metaphysical, diabolical.
I figure that that has a ten year cycle. At the end of that ten years, I began to get worried that I would run into what is known as the writer's block, the feeling of not being able to do these things.
A. E. van Vogt
But, somewhere in there, I did have the thought that this really fits in with my thinking about what I wanted to do; with what has to be done by a writer in order to stay alive as a writer.
You have to remember that I was a bright but simple fellow from Canada who seldom, if ever, met another writer, and then only a so-called literary type that occasionally sold a story and meanwhile worked in an office for a living.
I think that most of the children's writers live in the world that they've created, and their children are kind of phantoms that wander around the edge of it in the world, but actually the children's writers are the children.
A. S. Byatt
My professional and human obsession is the nature of language, and my best relationships are with other writers. In many ways, I know George Eliot better than I know my husband.
If you want to teach women to be great writers, you should show them the best, and the best was often done by men. It was more often done by men than by women, if we're going to be truthful.
Reading a newspaper is like reading someone's letters, as opposed to a biography or a history. The writer really does not know what will happen. A novelist needs to feel what that is like.
I am suspicious of writers who go looking for issues to address. Writers are neither preachers nor journalists. Journalists know much more than most writers about what's going on in the world. And if you want to change things, you do journalism.
There is always a certain leap of faith that editors have made with their nonfiction writers. If the trust is broken, things can get very embarrassing for the writers and the publisher.
A. Scott Berg
The important thing is to do what you most love in the best way. If you love literature, you could be a great writer and perhaps one day become a Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature.
Aaron Ciechanover
There's no one songwriter in the band. It's collaborative, and we all have different tastes.
Aaron Dessner
I mean, the problem is, I think I'm a great writer.
Aaron Eckhart
Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.
Aaron Sorkin
When I create a TV show, it's so that I can write it. I'm not an empire builder; my writing staff is usually a combination of two kinds of people - experts in the world the show is set in, and young writers who will not be unhappy if they're not writing scripts.
I think I would have done very well as a writer in the Forties. I think the last time America was a great country was then or not long after. It was before Vietnam, before Watergate.
But HBO is less interested in how many people are watching than in how much the people who are watching are liking the show. They didn't set up their business model to make writers happy. It's just a nice unintended consequence.
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.
If you lined up 10 writers and asked them to write a movie about Steve Jobs, you'd get 10 very different movies.
Originally, I wanted a pop career and formed a girl-band 'Genie Queen' managed by Andy McClusky from 'Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark', but it didn't work out. My brother John is the talented singer and song-writer with 'The Razz,' while my other brother Sean is a footballer for Telford United.
I love Maira Kalman. She's an amazing illustrator and writer. I've loved her since I was in college, but when I moved to New York and experienced the same city she was drawing and writing about, I developed a whole new appreciation. Her work made me observe everything so much deeper and more joyfully.
We love to start from a real place, whether it's us or our friends or working on a story from a writer's friend.
Why does 'writer' have no gender, but 'actor' has a gender? What is that?
Minister and writer Barbara Kaufmann has addressed the subject of guerrilla decontextualization on both the 'Voices Compassionate Education' website and on 'Inner Michael', where she offers the kind of insights into the spiritual aspects of Michael Jackson's creative artistry that mainstream media mostly ignores.
Whether you believe it or not, you have to understand the politics. In every script, there is a political bend that the writer has included. Whether you like it or not, is on you. But it's very important to know that politics.
I think writers should create characters who are human and have a character arc of their own.
There is an invisible aspect of being a writer; none of it is about you. It's about your work, and that's what it should be.
Now I would say I'm absolutely a feminist writer.
I think, in some ways, there's a point as a television writer that 'executive producer' is the natural credit you get, and it can be a vanity title, or you can make of it what you want.
I still always think the greatest moment for me, as a writer, is when I press that button and send the first draft of the script.
As a writer, you're not even at the party when you work in film. At best, you're the one laying out the canapes.
The joy for me as a writer is that, despite the fact I spend most of my life on my own in a room eating too much chocolate and drinking too much tea, eventually they let me out into the world.
I think film and television - particularly film - you are very isolated as a writer. If you're lucky, you have a good relationship with the director. Then you do make that development and come on set and be part of something. But ultimately, your work is kind of done by the time you come on set.
I think that, as a writer, while it's your job to construct stories, you have to navigate your way through them with your heart.
I know what it's like to be brought up by actors and writers.
I never get writer's block, but I do have days where I crawl under the duvet.
Life experiences inherently change you as a writer. My sense of fury calmed down when I had children and found a loving partner.
I'm a writer of fiction. I try to write about my time, but it's dangerous if I'm seen as an investigative writer. I manipulate and change and control.
The notion of having your muse was not something that was built for women originally. That's not to say women don't have muses. I get muses in terms of actors or writers who inspire me, so I understand the concept.
I got dumped off 'The Iron Lady' a month before they started shooting, and then they brought two new writers on. Then I was brought back on again. I'm just a bit of a rubber ball. I just bounce back.
My advice for writers is to get a good day job. It takes the pressure off writing if you have a job that pays the bills.
Lest it sound as if I resent my day job, I have to say that my day job is the reason I write, and it has been the best thing for me as a writer.
My writing flows out of my doctorhood. They are not separate things. They are one. I think the foremost connection between being a doctor and being a writer is the great privilege of having an intimate view of one's fellow humans, the privilege of being there and helping other people at their most vulnerable moments.
My first album after 'American Idol' I did with Desmond - we paid for it together, and we literally were together working on it every day for a year and half, just writing. We wrote in New York, Nashville, L.A., Sweden - we wrote with some other amazing songwriters like Diane Warren, too.
It really helped me as a writer to understand how other writers think.
I grew up - my dad, every time I was with my dad, he was always - not always, but he wrote. He's a writer. So he was always in his office writing. He made a plan and, like, a point of, 'This is my work. I'm going to do this every day for these amount of hours.' So I think that's where I got, like, a work sort of ethic.
The reason why you know more funny dudes than funny chicks is that dudes are funnier than chicks. If my daughter has a mediocre sense of humor, I'm just gonna tell her, 'Be a staff writer for a sitcom. Because they'll have to hire you, they can't really fire you, and you don't have to produce that much. It'll be awesome.'
Some people are writers and don't ever want to be on camera, some people act and not write - I like writing words for myself to say.
