My Writers Guild of America card is one of my proudest possessions. I was given it after being invited to write the script for a film of my last novel, 'Me Before You,' which is being made by MGM. Whenever I look at it, I think, 'I'm a Hollywood writer!'
I became a writer because I love books, and I believe in their power.
I believe that writer's block is a symptom. It's not a disease, it's the symptom of a disease. So what I try to do is kind of do it like 'House'; write down the symptom and write down the other symptoms. Try to work backwards to figure out what the problem is.
I've matured as a writer and human being. I've got some wisdom under my belt.
To be honest, the only thing I ever really wanted to be was a writer - since I read 'Charlotte's Web' as a child.
I felt like a number of things in me as a writer just clicked.
Having worked as both comedian and crime writer, the one thing I know is that both involve the delivery of a performance.
I'm not good at narrative; I'm really a gag writer, and that comes from being in the newspaper comic strip world for a while in college. What I do is I just write tons of jokes, then I sort them out in terms of quality and then pick the best of the jokes and then try to form them into a plot. If I get a good theme going, I feel lucky.
I'm not a writer; I'm an actor. My job is to take whatever character I'm given and - especially because I have the responsibility of being a black actress, and I know young black girls are looking up, and everyone's looking to what's on television - to just try to give whatever character I'm playing as three-dimensional a portrayal as I can.
As a writer, Chris Columbus was a big influence. 'The Goonies' was the first movie I ever saw that kids speak normally and not imagined how kids would talk. Always a big fan of Chris Columbus' dialogue and storytelling.
I'm fully conscious of the fact that I wouldn't be the writer that I am without this place, without Vermont College.
The expectations for a nonfiction writer are awful high.
I like writing comic pages, discovering the rhythm of the panels, learning how much you can and can't express. It's good to stretch myself as a writer instead of always doing prose work; I write screenplays for the same reason.
Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.
I knew I wanted to be involved with theater or film in any way I could, either as a writer or director or actress.
I long for, not a writer's retreat - I can write in any situation - but a reader's retreat.
I never stopped recording, but I went through a period where... The one thing that a lot of people don't know is that for as long as I've been as artist, I've been a writer and a producer.
Probably above all other things, I am interested as a writer in making a connection, interested in the parts of all of us that connect.
I love 'The Stand;' I read it when I was a kid - it was one of my favorite books when I was growing up. I love Stephen King; I think he's a remarkable writer.
As a writer, all you want to do is write for great actors. That's all.
As an actor, I've always been interested in making sure I can perform the role and the lines in the way the writer intended.
I wrote a lot of fiction, but it was just college stuff. It seems to me you have to be so confident in yourself to become a writer.
I would want to travel the world and write about it. To be a famous writer.
Theatre should be a taxing experience: the greatest achievement of a writer is to produce a character who creates anxiety.
For millions, Roger Ebert will be remembered as a writer and television personality who brought a sense of passion and excellence to his craft. For me, he is a man who fused joy and courage as few others ever have. My life was enriched by having such a friend; it is poorer for losing such a friend.
Alan Moore is a prophetic writer.
Being under the microscope meant I was never given any slack. I still managed to screw up plenty in life, mind you, but in the things I really cared about - the legal work, or the stories I was telling as a writer, or the office I built in government - I wasn't left a lot of margin for error. It's kept me driven.
I think one of the things that attracted me about theater and the stage was the ability to escape reality. And that is what I do in my work as a writer, but in a different way. And the freedom to put your own existence on ice and become another person.
There can be nothing more humiliating for a writer of fiction to have to do than restate a case that has already been made.
I have an obligation as a writer to tell a story as interestingly as possible, but with integrity and not inserting false drama... I'm looking to be subtle, but being a wordsmith does not interest me - I want to communicate.
I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.
In my career as a writer, I preferred to avoid current events: I wrote young adult novels and book reviews and lifestyle journalism about health and parenting and other such evergreens.
A good script is like a work of art in itself. I've read hundreds of scripts, and good ones are very rare. If the writer has something to say, and a voice, and a plot that matches character, and an emotional trajectory that works, then I'd be an idiot to fool around with it. It's just that few scripts ever are like that.
I don't have writer's block, really. I do have times when I can't get the lead, and that is the only part of the story which I have serious trouble with. I don't write a word of the article until I have the lead. It just sets the whole tone - the whole point of view.
I've always tried to write about America. It's very worth a writer's effort.
'SNL' doesn't have a traditional writer's room. On Monday, there's the pitch meeting with the guest, and I played that like it was stand-up.
