Being a twin, and being my sister's twin, is such a defining part of my life that I wouldn't know how to be who I am, including a writer, without that being somehow at the centre.
In some instances, I would say the writer does deserve equal billing with the director. In other instances the director - especially if he wrote part of the script himself - is clearly more the author of the movie.
The job of the writer is to make revolution irresistible.
A good writer cannot avoid having social consciousness. I don't mean this about small pieces of writing, but about a big book. If it's a big book, there has to be more than one undertow.
I did have imprinted on me the idea of trauma that changes things dramatically and suddenly. As a writer, I return to that again and again because it fascinates me, and it's where I come from, in a sense.
By the time I started high school, I knew I wanted to be a writer. After graduating from Smith College in Massachusetts, I moved to New York City and worked for the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson.
I know I'm not a great writer. I'm an extremely gifted oral communicator, but when it comes to writing, I'm just a beginner.
My wife and I always comment that our lives are relatively mundane. She's a writer as well, I'm a writer, we spend most of our time writing, and kind of going to yoga in Brooklyn.
When I became a published writer, I said, 'Whatever I can do to help the libraries I want to do,' so all of my book tours since then have involved me coming to a library and talking about how important libraries are for a community.
The whole trick is to make it feel like you're spying on real people's lives as they get through the day. When I'm writing, I have to trick myself as a writer. If I consciously say, 'I'm writing,' I feel all this pressure and somehow it doesn't feel as real as when it doesn't seem to count as much.
The more freedom I allow myself as a writer to wander, become lost and go into uncertain territory - and I am always trying to go to the more awkward place, the more difficult place - the more frightening it is, because I have no plan.
I can clearly trace my passion for reading back to the Jonesboro, Georgia, library, where for the first time in my life I had access to what seemed like an unlimited supply of books. This was where I discovered 'Encyclopedia Brown' and 'Nancy Drew,' 'Gone With the Wind' and 'Rebecca.' This was where I became inspired to be a writer.
When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.
In the glory days of Orioles, when I was a newbie baseball writer for the Post, the roster of talkers was as good as the everyday lineup. Singy - Ken Singleton - Flanny, and Cakes - the underwear spokesman Jim Palmer - were my go-to guys, occupying stalls along one wall of the shabby chic clubhouse.
I love Dave Eggers. I hate Dave Eggers. If I could become any other living writer, I would answer faster than anyone else in the room, 'Dave Eggers.'
The great thing about being a writer is that you have a long, perhaps frighteningly long time in which to do your work.
I am trying to concentrate on books. You know, I love Dostoevsky; he's my favourite writer.
Justin Lin, the writer and director of the teenage-wasteland drama 'Better Luck Tomorrow,' a shrewdly tense piece of storytelling, recognizes that sometimes it's good for a filmmaker to stir up trouble.
I wanted to be a writer that had an impact. I wanted, and still I say the same thing, I want to write books that change people's lives, change how we think and live and read and write. I wanna write books that are read in 50 or 100 years.
I think I'm an American writer writing about Latin America, and I'm a Latin American writer who happens to write in English.
The life of the professional writer - like that of any freelance, whether she be a plumber or a podiatrist - is predicated on willpower. Without it there simply wouldn't be any remuneration, period.
I would never make up a character who didn't exist or an event that didn't transpire. If you're a real writer, you have other tools in your toolbox to build drama.
As a writer, I try to appeal to the 'elusive boy audience' the same way I try to appeal to everyone: I do the very best I can to create interesting characters, addictive plots, tons of conflict, believable settings, unexpected plot twists, intriguing beginnings, and satisfying endings.
The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.
It's pretty cool that artists like Flo Rida and Bingo Players can be inspired to interpret a song like 'Piano in the Dark' in completely new genres. As an artist and writer, it's the highest compliment we can be paid.
We are all shaped by where we grow up, though that shaping takes different forms. I don't think there's any doubt that coming of age in Winnipeg both opened my eyes and made me hungry - if I can subvert all claims to be a real writer by mixing metaphors like that.
There's a danger in romanticizing what it means to be a writer. Because what it really means is hard, hard work. It means tearing your hair out. Feeling like your head is about to explode.
I wish podcasting was my only job - I have more fun doing that than I have doing absolutely anything else. But my job is that I'm a writer.
History is imperfect and biased, and it always, always has omissions. The most common omissions are the bits that the writer of that history took for granted that his readers would know.
Shakespeare is in many ways an African writer and 'Hamlet' would be seen as a very accurate historical saga about an African kingdom.
That was one of the reasons I became a writer - I never really had that many friends. I would read a lot, and listen to music. And that was my life.
Television? It's a gateway to writer's block, isn't it?
Finney is about the best writer of time travel stories ever, and I adore time travel stories - have to make a time travel game someday!
The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.
I had to sell my house and make a lot of sacrifices to become a writer, and it sucks not to get taken seriously.
Let me now praise the American writer James Dickey. In 1970, his novel 'Deliverance' was published. I found it to be 278 pages that approached perfection. Its tightness of construction and assuredness of style reminded me of 'The Great Gatsby.'
