I knew that I wanted to be a writer even before I knew exactly what being a writer entailed.
I think the only way you can become a writer is through honing your voice, creating your own voice.
As a guest who doesn't eat, drink or smoke, you leave much to be desired, but as a writer, you're my girl.
I kind of just stumbled into producing. It was more that I was a writer, and the only way you were going to get your songs done was to do them yourself.
I learned to be a regional writer by reading people like Flannery O'Connor. She was a huge influence.
I have a cheat-sheet for each one of my characters about their personality, the way they look, etc. So there is no possible way that I could have writer's block.
I worry that people think you have to go to a university to be a good writer, which is categorically untrue. I don't think I learned how to write at Oxford. I did not go to any creative writing classes or anything.
When you have another actor as your boss, they understand how to communicate easier sometimes than just a writer.
One of the best parts of being a writer means that researching all kinds of cool stuff actually counts as work!
Readers tell me that my novels are filled with significant mothers. Do I realize this? Do I do it on purpose? The truth is, I don't. I think of myself as a writer of family stories. I write more often than not from a male point of view, and I usually begin by focusing on siblings, spouses, even fathers, before I think about the mothers.
The idea that you're not a writer until you're published is a lie.
I lead a very conventional life. I don't lead a writer's life. And I think that can be a source of suspicion and irritation to some people. This was more true when I was living in California, when I didn't lead a writer's life at all.
So, through all that early professional career I would occasionally do a musical, a pantomime or a play with songs. The next stop would be a Shakespeare, or an Ibsen, or a play by a brand new writer who had never done anything in the theater before.
In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.
Every writer has to figure out what works best - and often has to select and discard different tools before they find the one that fits.
If they don't read, if they don't love reading; if they don't find themselves compulsively reading, I don't think they're really a writer.
It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
When I got the invitation to be part of 'The Ghost' or 'The Ghost Writer,' as it's now known, from Mr. Roman Polanski, my interest level was very piqued. I was very excited and pleased to get such an offer from Mr. Roman Polanski.
The same tools that make any writer good, plus a cheerful willingness to suspend belief.
I think that everything you do helps you to write if you're a writer. Adversity and success both contribute largely to making you what you are. If you don't experience either one of those, you're being deprived of something.
I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
The act of writing surprises me all the time. A miraculous thing happens when you have an idea and you want to convert it into words... and then you start to create a work of art, and that's another miracle, and it remains mysterious to the writer, or to this writer anyway.
I always claim that the writer has done 90 percent of the director's work.
I think of myself as a fantasy writer.
A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.
I started trying to be a writer and failed for years. I tried novels, short stories, sitcoms, movies, plays, anything. And then, to support myself, I had millions of jobs on the fringes of show business.
The demons you have are what motivate you to make your art. This is what drives the detective, this is what drives the painter, this is what drives the writer: a conflicting urge to forget pain and at the same time remember it and fight for some kind of justice. I know these powerful things are inside of me and everyone in some way or another.
Steve Martin is such an exquisite and precise writer. Everything is so clear; it's like a bell. He says what he means and says it so beautifully.
I'm a writer first and an editor second... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don't claim to have all of them at my command.
I'm a fast writer.
I became a writer in spite of my environments.
When you're a writer, you never know which of your pieces are going to gain a toehold and which will not, and it's best not to care too much.
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. I can't believe it when writers tell me 'I don't want to show my work to anybody'.
I wouldn't not want to be a director and write as I wouldn't not to want to be a writer and direct movies.
The first things I did was I was a writer, painter, and photographer, and we grew up very poor, so even though I could get into any college I wanted, there was no way to pay for it.
I'm a very spoiled writer. I need to be indolent, to waste a lot of paper. I'm inefficient.
