Truth be told, I didn't want to be on T.V. I was going to be a writer or producer or a director, and at the end of my sophomore year, my department chairman put me up for a job doing weekend weather in Syracuse, New York.
I don't think there's any topic a writer should feel afraid of tackling just because it has already been discussed. If you feel you have a fresh perspective and an understanding of a certain emotional truth, it's always worth writing.
Jamal: Man, what am I DOIN' in here, man? This ol' ghetto ass class got people in here lookin' like a bad rerun of cops!
Eddie Morra: [Talking about himself] You see, that guy was me not long ago. What kind of guy without a drug or alcohol problem looks this way? Only a writer, strangely enough.
Adult Pi Patel: Now we have to send our little boy to the middle of the Pacific. Writer: And make me believe in God. Adult Pi Patel: Yes, we will get there.
Ernest Hemingway: You'll never be a great writer if you fear dying, do you? Gil: Yeah, I do. I would say it's my greatest fear.
Zidler: ...And you're dallying with the writer. Satine: Oh, Harold, don't be ridicul... Zidler: I saw you together. Satine: It's nothing. It's just an infatuation. It's... it's nothing.
Writer: [subtitled version] While I am digging for the truth, so much happens to it that instead of discovering the truth I dig up a heap of, pardon... I'd better not name it.
Simply as a writer of books I'm thrilled and proud that Seattle should have raised, on a public vote, sufficient money to build a central library, and moreover to rebuild every other library in the city: 28 of them.
I didn't need to borrow money from the record company, because if I had my own publishing company, and I had my own writers, I'd have enough to get and do whatever I wanted to do.
Labels only confuse people. The smarter people recognize artists who transcend categories. But I always try to entertain. It's in my nature; writers are born to entertain. If that means working ostensibly within a genre, fine.
At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British power. It's extraordinary that at the moment in which England was the global superpower the subject of British power appeared not to interest most writer...
I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.
Pop science goes flying off in all kinds of fashionable directions, and it often drags a lot of SF writers with it. I've been led astray like that myself at times.
Perhaps writers should never be allowed to get together in a workplace context. It's not like studying computer science, after all. The emotions are at large, and are shared and are questioned. There is a vulnerability.
Many writers upon the science of political economy have declared that it is the duty of a nation first to encourage the creation of wealth; and second, to direct and control its distribution. All such theories are delusive.
I have no formal training as a writer at all, not even a single English class in college. However, my adult books are all science fiction, which has some similarities to YA.
Getting a book published made me feel a little bit sad. I felt driven by the need to write a book, rather than the need to write. I needed to figure out what was important to me as a writer.
If the sad truth be known, writers, being the misfits we are, probably ought not to belong to families in the first place. We simply are too self-interested, though we may excuse the flaw by calling it 'focused.'
I always wanted to create a site that was sports and pop culture. '30 for 30' had a big impact because I loved how that was about finding, empowering and working with these incredible directors, and I thought the same thing could work for writers.
If I could have married my wife and been a sports writer for the past 30 years, I wouldn't be sitting here - but I don't think I'd be sitting someplace where I was sorry to be sitting.
