I always think that good writers should be growing up on the brink of death - it really lets them see mortality very clearly.
I've told several writers this, and, again, I get back to it, but if you want to make God smile, tell him your plans.
But I was, and still am, an avid reader and so when I first started I chose to photograph many of the great writers in this country to try and earn a living.
'21 Jump Street' is great. I just made that, and produced it and was a writer on it. It's starring myself and Channing Tatum, and maybe some surprise guests.
The great thing about being a writer is that you have a long, perhaps frighteningly long time in which to do your work.
I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.
But Racine's extraordinary powers as a writer become still more obvious when we consider that besides being a great poet he is also a great psychologist.
I gave Joss Whedon and Judd Apatow their first writing jobs, as well as many other untried writers who went on to great success.
I knew Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were really talented. As actors, they were both studly young men, and they had great writers' chops.
Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can't quite get off their back . And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions.
Some of the most untidy writers have also been the most productive. Iris Murdoch, for instance, wrote a good 30 books in a house strewn with rubbish.
I find that with any good run on a show with good writers, they put something on paper, and you put something back on film, and that affects what they put on the paper the next time.
Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient.
A good writer can set a thriller anywhere and make it convincing: the trick is to evoke the setting in such a way that it highlights the crime or unsettles the reader.
There aren't enough good roles for strong women. I wish we had more female writers. Most of the female characters you see in films today are the 'poor heartbroken girl.'
I always think the insecurity is going to go away, but it's always there. Only bad writers think they're good.
What good is a writer if he can't destroy literature? And us... what good are we if we don't help as much as we can in that destruction?
There are some good songs, but not the kind of song-writing that I remember, that I like. Springsteen still does it. Paul Simon, and there are also good writers, but that doesn't dominate the charts.
A creative writing program is only as good as its teachers, and I was fortunate in having two great writers as mentors.
Well see, I'm a good enough writer that not everybody in my books talks exactly like I do.
Fear is the major cargo that American writers must stow away when the writing life calls them into carefully chosen ranks.
