For me, screenwriting is all about setting characters in motion and as a writer just chasing them. They should tell you what they'll do in any scene you put them in.
Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.
Although I always loved reading and putting words on paper, I never thought about becoming a writer until I was twelve.
As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.
There's something very misleading about the literary culture that looks at writers in their 30s and calls them 'budding' or 'promising', when in fact they're peaking.
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
There are writers in Germany who drink the Absolute like water; and there are books in which even the dogs make references to the Infinite.
I want to go to college. I'm going to take four years off. I don't want to miss that. I want to be a writer. I think that'd be awesome.
When you live in Brooklyn, if you throw a rock, you'll hit a writer - Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Lethem, Paul Auster.
Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.
There is no mistaking the dismay on the face of a writer who has just heard that his brain child is a deformed idiot.
Anyone can write one book: even politicians do it. Starting a second book reveals an intention to be a professional writer.
I don't like to hurt people's feelings, and I don't like to knock other writers as a matter of principle.
When somebody asks me what I do, I don't think I'd say critic. I say writer.
I didn’t know that painters and writers retired. They’re like soldiers – they just fade away.
One of my rules is never explain. A writer is a lot like a magician, if you explain how the trick works then a lot of the magic turns mundane.
I've been writing stories since I was 12. 'Writer's Digest' was one of my writing teachers, actually.
All writers are different, each have their own artist way they go about telling a story. The only thing they have in common, is they write.
A writer’s brain is like a magician’s hat. If you’re going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in it first
When I was in high school and college, my other real focus was, actually, fiction writing. So in college, I had done all these seminars with these various writers-in-residence.
I am primarily a writer of books, and I enjoy that. But I come to realize that a lot of people prefer a visual medium.
