The main engagement of the writer is towards truthfulness; therefore he must keep his mind and his judgement free.
I think the novel form chose me. I was a writer before I became a criminal... my first instinct was to write.
There's an inherent idea that if a Black executive producer and a Black director are going to do a movie based on a Black writer's book that everybody is going to be Black.
I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place
We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets.
From my writer's workshop, "Know when it's time to put everything you've got on the page. Then, rip open a vein and do it!
As soon as I started writing, other writers stopped wanting me acting in their shows - maybe they thought I was going to rewrite them.
What description of clouds and sunsets was to the old novelist, description of scientific apparatus and methods is to the modern Scientific Detective writer.
Imagination is the parallel universe of a writer. If he is not responding to you in this world, he is probably responding to someone in the imaginary world.
I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.
My joy as a writer is circling around and around and down and down to find out who the real person is.
I'm not intimidated by other actors at all - or directors. I don't care who they are. But I am intimidated by writers. I hold them in the highest esteem.
Writers have told me more than once that I'm a better interview in defeat than in victory, which is a compliment I am extremely proud of.
They say that every writer, they write about himself, and I think that to a certain extent that is true. But also we are creators of fiction.
No writer for the press, however humble, is free from the burden of keeping his purpose high and his integrity white.
There may well be writers who roll up their sleeves and say, 'I'm going to write a post-9/11 novel' but I wasn't one of those.
I think it takes about a million words to make a writer. I mean that you're going to throw away.
Whatever the reviewers feel about 'The Casual Vacancy', it is what I wanted it to be, and you can't say fairer than that as a writer.
I've no desire to start a movement, to be the first name on an open petition, or to be the poster child for disgruntled writers.
Definitely I grew up listening to Joni Mitchell, and I think she is a wonderful writer, so she is probably part of me.
Steve Martin is such an exquisite and precise writer. Everything is so clear; it's like a bell. He says what he means and says it so beautifully.
