Why does 'writer' have no gender, but 'actor' has a gender? What is that?
If I had grown up in London, I wouldn't have been as keen to become a comedian or a writer. I'd have been able to see a lot of good films and music and comedy. I'd have been distracted. As it was, I had to make it.
As an artist, as an actor, as a writer, you have to use what's personal to you. You have to be personal about your work; otherwise, it doesn't ring true.
My parents were both born in 1930. They grew up during the Depression. They wanted their children to have secure lives, to have a good salary and a pension plan. If I could've guaranteed that I'd be a best-selling writer, that would've been one thing, but nobody could say that. So I knew better than to say that was ambition.
I don't consider myself a Jewish writer.
As for the kind of writer I am? I am who I don't pretend to be.
A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.
If I remember correctly, a writer is someone who wants to convey information. Language or writing is a code.
I'm a social writer in the sense that I want to record, but not in the sense of trying to change people's minds.
The homosexual community wants me to be gay. The heterosexual community wants me to be straight. Every writer thinks, I'm the journalist who's going to make him talk. I pray for them. I pray that they get a life and stop living mine!
I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.
My theory about why Hemingway killed himself is that he heard his own voice; that he reached the point where he couldn't write without feeling he was repeating himself. That's the worst thing that can happen to a writer.
As a writer, or as a filmmaker, you have to present yourself, and part of what yourself is is what you're interested in, or what you think is funny, or what you think is sad, or what you think is horrible.
Acquiring an aggressive, honest, and communicative agent with actual relationships in real-live New York publishing houses is, in my opinion, the single most important move that a writer who aspires to be successful can make.
We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.
I have no problem selling books to media franchises and we do it all the time. The author must understand that he/she is a writer for hire and has no control over copyright or over editorial changes made to the text.
I think in some ways, acting and writing are the same. You're getting inside the skin of someone else; you're creating their language and their actions. As a writer, you have to see the whole picture and the structure, and you have to understand every character.
A writer has to live with a sense of honor.
I did several interesting jobs, working in restaurants, I worked at a lab rat farm, feeding and watering all these rats. Then I got a full-time job as a technical writer for a large scientific research laboratory.
Mostly, I would like people to ask other writers about the craft of their writing so we could learn from one another. We ask movie directors why they chose to use certain lights and angles and speeds of film, but most of the time, we ignore the craft of a writer.
The impact of any particular writer on your own work is hard to discern.
It's part of a writer's profession, as it's part of a spy's profession, to prey on the community to which he's attached, to take away information - often in secret - and to translate that into intelligence for his masters, whether it's his readership or his spy masters. And I think that both professions are perhaps rather lonely.
You know you lose a lot of social skills if you're a writer. You spend too long alone. And its forced me to address that.
That is a secondary teacher conception - the writer as an observer.
I believe the wedding vows are sacred and precious, and it's been one of my goals as a writer to portray the kind of marriages I've seen modeled in my family - my parents and grandparents, who all celebrated fifty-year anniversaries and well-beyond.
For me, as a writer who comes from quite a naturalistic tradition, British screenwriting is quite delicate, quite small, and rarified in a way.
The wonderful thing about being a writer is that everything that happens is grist to the mill.
Novelist and poet David Huddle is a quiet but fabulous writer, and he does adolescent longing better than anyone I know.
As a writer of colour, you have to be victim or perpetrator.
After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
Capra always wanted a screenwriter with him, even on the soundstage. The writer had to be there at his side.
It's very hard to tell somebody how to write when they're so good, and they're a brilliant writer and a really good guy.
When I was a child, writing was the worst possible choice of a career in my family. My father had always identified himself as a writer to my mother when they met. When they met, he was writing this great novel, there was no doubt about it.
When I went in, my editor said, 'I hope you don't think you're a writer.' And I said, 'I hope you don't think I'm a journalist.' And, uh, turned out we were both right.
Any writer my age almost can't get away from being influenced by Kurt Vonnegut, partially because of his simple, clear way of stating things. To read Vonnegut is to learn how to use economy words.
I'm not a pop song lyric writer. I can't just focus on one simple meaning or even a double entendre.
