The Western poet and writer of romance has exactly the same kind of difficulty in comprehending Eastern subjects as you have in comprehending Western subjects.
We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.
I'm more influenced by my own interests than anyone else's. Writers have to entertain themselves, or they can't entertain anyone else.
I am deeply in tune with my heart and core, and it's made me a better writer, artist, and most of all woman. It's made me more myself.
Can I possibly be a good writer if I'm not healed form the story I'm telling? Will I be able to go deep enough if people find out the truth?
Why do writers write? Why do actors act? Why do painters paint? It doesn't pay much, unless you're very successful. It's who we are.
It takes awhile for writers to get to know actors rhythms, not just as actors, but what they bring to the characters. I think it takes a few episodes for the writing room to catch up to the actors and vice versa.
I picked up reading late because I grew up dyslexic. When I went to college, a friend who was a big reader got me started on a number of writers, including Hemingway.
I've seen enough successful writers who no longer seem to care when they are recognized with an award, and I think that's just tragic.
I'm a writer first and a singer second. And then I started editing my own videos when I was 17, so it's a process I've been doing since I was younger.
A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood.
The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.
I like terrific writing, but I also like a terrific story. My favorite books have both, and they're by contemporary, commercial American writers.
I was always an outsider, always standing outside, observing and trying to figure things out. Which is exactly what you need to do as a writer, I suppose.
I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.
I don't usually think of my writing as a 'challenge' because I enjoy the process so much. I suppose that's what's helped me to avoid 'writer's block' all these years.
I wasn't involved, except to the degree that they sent me drafts of the script as the writer turned them in. They asked me at one point to write a memo about what I thought of it.
I think... the most brilliant thing about being a writer is that if you don't like the way the world is, you can create your own.
Writers want to talk. They can't wait to tell you what they've been thinking. And because they've been in solitude, they've had some fairly decent thoughts.
There's something with the physical size of America... American writers can write about America and it can still feel like a foreign country.
Reason is a fine thing, but it is not the only thing available to a writer. It's just part of the arsenal of many things available to a storyteller. Revelation, for example.
