Camera lies all the time. It's all it does is lie, because when you choose this moment instead of this moment, when you... the moment you've made a choice, you're lying about something larger. 'Lying' is an ugly word. I don't mean lying. But any arti...
I don't think I knew that you could be a novelist. I think a lot of my students are in the same condition. I thought it was unreachable, that it was sort of dead people. It took me a long time - I think I was well into novel writing before I really t...
In re-reading 'Presumed Innocent,' the one thing that struck me - and I re-read the book four different times in writing 'Innocent,' interested in different things each time - but I did think there were a couple of extra loops in the plot that I prob...
My advice is this. For Christ's sake, don't write a book that is suitable for a kid of 12 years old, because the kids who read who are 12 years old are reading books for adults. I read all of the James Bond books when I was about 11, which was approx...
My grandmother taught me how to read, very early, but she taught me to read just the way she taught herself how to read - she read words rather than syllables. And as a result of that, when I entered school, it took me a long time to learn how to wri...
From time to time, as if heaven-sent to annoy, someone will ask me if I'm self-disciplined when it comes to my work. I usually look witheringly at them and snarl, 'What do you think?' I mean, how do you imagine anyone writes a quarter of a million wo...
Dora's Client: [dictating a letter with her son] Dear Jesus, You're the worst thing to happen to me. I'm writing because your son Josue asked me to. I told him you're worthless, and yet, he still wants to meet you.
Lazar Wolf: How is your brother-in-law? In America? Tevye: Oh, he's doing very well. Lazar Wolf: Oh, he wrote you? Tevye: No, not lately. Lazar Wolf: Then how do you know? Tevye: If he was doing badly, he would write.
Chava: I'll write to you in America if you like. Golde: [shouts] We'll be staying with Uncle Avram! Chava: Yes, Mama! Tevye: [annoyed] We'll be staying with Uncle Avram! We'll be staying with Uncle Avram! The whole world has to know our business!
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: [writing to his mother, telling her that he's seen his first negroes amongst those fleeing the south] We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written but which will presently be as enviable and as renowned as any.
Lucy: [being observed] I want no other daddy but you. [turns to the glass] Lucy: [shouts] Did you hear that? I said I didn't want any other daddy but him. Why don't you write that down?
Feather Woman: Excuse me, have you seen my husband, Izaak Szerman? A tall, a tall handsome man, with a little grey beard. No? Oh, excuse me. Goodbye, sleep well. But if you see him, write to me, yes? Izaak Szerman!
Herman Blume: Take it easy, Max. Rosemary Cross: You were the one that ordered him a whiskey and soda. Max Fischer: So what's wrong with that? I can write a hit play. Why can't I have a little drink to unwind myself?
Joe Gillis: I'm not an executive, just a writer. Norma Desmond: You are, are you? writing words, words, more words! Well, you'll make a rope of words and strangle this business! With a microphone there to catch the last gurgles, and Technicolor to ph...
Alvin Straight: I want to thank you for your kindness to a stranger. Danny Riordan, Clermont Resident: It's been a genuine pleasure having you here, Alvin. Write to us some time. Alvin Straight: I will.
Everybody makes money for a living, but most of us actually do something that has a point, in addition to just making money. We examine and treat patients, we teach students, we draw up contracts and wills, we write for newspapers, magazines, and web...
My assumption when I began writing was that you were never going to make any money. And you were never going to reach everyone. Therefore you had to do as much as you could in the service of something you genuinely believed in. And if you do that and...
I wish I'd been better able to resist the sense of obligation to write some of the poems I did. It's in the nature of commissioned work to be written too much from the side of your mind that knows what it's doing, which dries up the poetry.
I could draw Bloom County with my nose and pay my cleaning lady to write it, and I'd bet I wouldn't lose 10% of my papers over the next twenty years. Such is the nature of comic-strips. Once established, their half-life is usually more than nuclear w...
It's so much work to make a movie, and for me it has to get me off my butt. To get me actually writing you have to strike something inside, you have to hit a power main to get the energy. You have to strike something you care about.
I think reviewers have become particularly venomous because, in a way, the power has been sucked from them. A 15-year-old can write a review on the Internet and it means as much as Roger Ebert's review, and that just makes Roger Ebert mad, so he come...
