In my experience an appreciative letter from a fellow writer means a lot.
'Between Shades of Gray' is a story of astonishing force. I feel grateful for a writer like Ruta Sepetys who bravely tells the hard story of what happens to the innocent when world leaders and their minions choose hate and oppression. Beautiful and unforgettable.
You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.
I certainly don't think I would have been asked to pose for Rage if I wasn't a known writer.
From a writer's standpoint, each character and story presents its own unique challenges and delights. I'm deeply curious about all of my characters, and I love peeling away their layers to see what's underneath their skin, or secreted deep within their hearts.
I think any writer is a fool if he doesn't do it for money. There needs to be some kind of incentive in addition to the project. It all goes together. It's fun to sit there and think of characters and get them into action, then be paid for it.
All that I am is me. So I'm not really a poet or a writer or an actor or an activist; I'm me, and these are things that I do.
I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
I was going to be a writer. One person believed I could do it: my mom. Having her faith in me was like carrying around the Hammer of Thor.
It was in New York, and I've always wanted to film in New York. And the writer was a teenage friend of mine. We did youth theatre together when we were 16 and always had a dream of making a film together. And ten years later, we've done it. So it's great.
The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him.
What I try to keep in mind is that there are going to be a lot of articles that are going to be misrepresentative of what I'm about as a person and as a writer.
It may interest you to know that my breakup with Terry and this mystery did not happen concurrently in real life. That is a writer's device, which places Gabriel under even greater pressure when the mystery begins to reveal itself.
My history is pretty different from the history of most professors. I was a high school dropout. I dropped out and became a science fiction writer.
Like every Southern writer, I thought that I needed to write the next 'Gone With the Wind.'
When I sit down to write, I don't have any real goals except to follow one good sentence with another... I'm not the kind of writer who has a map.
I don't think there's been any writer like Samuel Beckett. He's unique. He was a most charming man and I used to send him my plays.
What other grown-up gets told how to do their job so often as a writer?
Before my book, 'California,' came out, I had modest hopes for it. Or, let's put it this way - I had the same hopes that every literary fiction writer in America has: I wanted the novel to be well-received, critically. As for sales? I didn't want it to disappoint, but I didn't expect it to be a best-seller, either.
It's been so long since a talented writer last occupied the White House; no wonder, then, that American writers have been among the most prominent of all the demographic groups claiming a piece of Barack Obama for themselves.
It's like two years straight out of your life doing a film. It's very enjoyable, especially working with the guys, but I kind of like the idea of traveling and growing, and developing as a writer and as a filmmaker.
After 'Nikki' and 'Steve Harvey,' I had written on a show called 'The Oblongs,' which was pretty well respected and had a lot of 'Simpsons' writers on it. So I was a TV writer with an interesting voice at that moment.
I've never minded solitude. For a writer, it's a natural condition. But caring for a dementia sufferer leads to a peculiar kind of loneliness.
I don't think of the characters as being good or bad because that doesn't help me as a writer.
As coaches, we learn to accept criticism for our decisions. If a writer says you shouldn't have gone for it on fourth-and-one, we understand that's part of the job. We expect it.
I like 'Bewitched' off the first album because it's one of the happiest songs I've ever written and, as any writer will tell you, happy songs are a million times more difficult to write than sad songs.
Again and again, Primo Levi's work is described as indispensable, essential, necessary. None of those terms overstate the case, but they do prepare readers new to Levi for a forbiddingly educative experience, making him a writer unlike all others and the experience of reading him a chore. Which it isn't.
An incinerator is a writer's best friend.
There was a little movie I did called 'Women In Trouble' that a friend of mine made. That, to me, was a very satisfying project. It was shot so quickly during the writer's strike, and there was no money. It was a really fun project.
I don't remember deciding to become a writer. You decide to become a dentist or a postman. For me, writing is like being gay. You finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and hope that no one runs away.
Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.
The mark of a writer is to make a story as likely as possible, and I've done my best to deliver authentic atmosphere.
Writers are troubled about finding time to write and writer's block and publicizing books that aren't books yet. They agonize over how to write and what to write and what not to write.
When I read 'Greenberg,' I had a really strong sense if I could be any kind of writer I wanted to be, I'd be this kind of writer. And I felt like, even in my experiences, what writing I had done, even on a small scale, when it was good, it shared some quality with it.
My inspiration came especially in the 1950s through the Vienna Group founded by writer H.C. Artmann. It showed me that if you want to say something, you have to let the language itself say it, because language is usually more meaningful than the mere content that one wishes to convey.
My guiltiest pleasure is Harry Stephen Keeler. He may have been the greatest bad writer America has ever produced. Or perhaps the worst great writer. I do not know. There are few faults you can accuse him of that he is not guilty of. But I love him.
