I began as a fiction writer - I had written three novels in my 20s and 30s. But as my work has gravitated towards literary nonfiction, or lyric essay or poetic essay, whatever you want to call it, I'm constantly beating my head against the wall 'cause I'm teaching a genre that's no longer that exciting to me and that I'm no longer practicing.
If a writer is to tell his own story - tell it slowly, and as if it were a story about other people - if he is to feel the power of the story rise up inside him, if he is to sit down at a table and patiently give himself over to this art - this craft - he must first have been given some hope.
I always wanted to be a writer... 'Critical Care' was my first published work. I was 34 when it came out. I was accumulating 'Critical Care' for years. I would go for a whole year and not touch it. And then I'd go back to it.
I think with every writer there are two people there.
Well, in features, and in writing especially, it's often the style of the writer comes in.
I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.
I am a woman, and I am Jewish; I'm a film-maker, and I'm a writer, so you cannot just put me in one box.
Now I am a writer who can command fairly good payments from magazines with large circulations, I very often refuse to write for them and still write sometimes for small magazines for nothing.
In journalism just one fact that is false prejudices the entire work. In contrast, in fiction one single fact that is true gives legitimacy to the entire work. That's the only difference, and it lies in the commitment of the writer. A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe in it.
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.
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
I love telling stories. I love the intimacy between the writer and reader. When you write sketches it's over in two minutes. When you write a book the characters have to have a bit of emotional depth.
Well, you know, I'm quite a reluctant writer. I'm not someone who set out to be a writer or really wanted to be.
I don't know what would have happened to me as a writer if I had gone to England and shaped my life out of England. Of course, I will never know, but I think I prefer what did happen.
Four years earlier I had been selected, with Kay Boyle, the writer, and a number of others, to go to Cambodia and come back and prove that there were no sanctuaries in that country.
Ellington is a writer and arranger, as well as a musician and leader. He does movie sound tracks.
I'd always liked to write, but I never wanted to be a writer, because it seemed a sissy occupation. It is. To this day, I find it terribly easy. And so, rather than trying to hunt up a text, I just wrote one.
There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.
I wasn't entitled to dream so big. The idea of me being a writer wasn't even possible in my mind. Even when I began to write and first published, I couldn't call myself a writer.
Providing a writer isn't put off by conventions - and some are - attending them can be a nice break from the necessary isolation of writing.
Shakespeare, who is probably the greatest writer and poet of the English language, lived in a time that was politically very conservative and it's reflected in his writings.
I've always been a writer because I've always been a student. My mom's a retired professor, so I come from a very academic background. I love writing, you know?
I was asked to be on 'The Colbert Report' last year as Big Bird and Oscar. But when we got there, we discovered they wanted both characters on at the same time. Stephen Colbert didn't know one man plays them both. We called Joey Mazzarino, our head writer, who's a very good puppeteer as well. He agreed to zip over and do Oscar.
I'm not constrained by being a genre writer. Any story I can imagine, I can cast as a fantasy novel and probably get it published.
I was really bored, pretty antisocial, and not much of a joiner, and people thought that was a problem. I hated high school. In a way, it was good... I think, for a writer, it's good to be comfortable with being on the outside.
I'm a long-time fan of Rob Long, and his books are hugely re-readable, detailing the ins and outs of being a Hollywood comedy writer with a past success but with everything to prove.
I wanted to be a writer first, and I struck out in the world to be a writer first, and then found stand-up as a more creative outlet, as a 3D way to be creative.
A painter, a sculptor, a writer, they can express freely. They don't affect society as a whole. We build buildings that have a purpose, that stay there for hundreds of years or decades.
My great fear of being attacked or trivialized by my contemporaries made me concentrate on what I was trying to do as a writer. It forced me to draw some conclusions that were my own.
I have to understand what my strengths and limitations are, and work from a true place. I try to do this as best I can while still protecting my writer self, which more than ever needs privacy.
I will say that the prison regime is rather a good one for a writer because you have plenty of time to write.
I'm not going to get into the writer's skills or what he was trying to portray because that's not fair. I can only say what I felt was trying to be portrayed there.
When I was a child I used to read books by Gerald Durrell, who founded Jersey Zoo. He had a job collecting animals for zoos and for a long time that is what I wanted to do. Later when I was a teenager I had a fantastic English teacher called Mrs. Stafford. Her enthusiasm made me decide to be a writer.
I'm a really slow writer. What I need to start writing on any given day, is a kernel, a line of dialogue, anything I can sense concretely.
I've never thought of myself as a writer. I still don't, despite all the writing I've done.
I sometimes wonder if I would have become a writer if what happened to my father hadn't happened.
