I'm a writer. The more I act, the more resistance I have to it. If you accept work in a movie, you accept to be entrapped for a certain part of time, but you know you're getting out. I'm also earning enough to keep my horses, buying some time to writ...
In all seriousness, people think that it's the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thous...
When I was 30 or so - by that time I had become an assistant D.A. - I decided I would try to write a novel. To be clear: I did not decide to become a novelist. Honestly, it never crossed my mind that I could actually earn a living as a professional n...
I don't write diaries and things like that, but I have a fantastic memory. I call that like a magic carpet. I can really concentrate and travel back in the past I don't know how many years from now and evoke that space if I wanted.
When I sit at my table to write, I never know what it's going to be until I'm under way. I trust in inspiration, which sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't. But I don't sit back waiting for it. I work every day.
Writing a novel is a huge adventure; when it's going well it's more fun than fun. When it stutters to a halt put it aside. Go for a swim, go for a walk, take a week off. Don't panic or be afraid; you and your characters are in it together. Trust them...
I don't for one second think about the possibility of censorship when I am writing a new book. I know I am a person who cares about kids and who cares about truth and I am guided by my own instincts, and trust them.
I still want to write Clint Eastwood a letter saying, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry for all us wimp actors. You're the truth.' I guarantee he's not the person you want to fight, even now! You look at him, and you don't want to mess with him. He would still t...
[after Dyle sees Herman Scobie hanging from the edge of the building] Alexander Dyle: How are you doing? Herman Scobie: HOW DO YOU THINK? Alexander Dyle: If you get bored, try writing 'Love Thy Neighbor' a hundred times on the side of the building!
Henry Barthes: [In nursing home] Grampa, you doing any writing in your journal? [Thumbs through empty journal] Grampa: I don't remember much, I lost the habit. You can't think in this place, you can't make new memories.
Basie: What did you say your name was boy? Jamie: Jamie and I'm building a man-flying kite and writing a book called Contract Bridge. Basie: Jim a new name for a new life.
Bjurman: How many partners have you had in the last month? And how many of those were men? It's regulation. I have to ask these things. Lisbeth Salander: Write what you want.
Hildy Johnson: A big fat lummox like you hiring an airplane to write: "Hildy, don't be hasty. Remember my dimple. Walter." Delayed our divorce 20 minutes while the judge went out and watched it.
Susannah: Tristan, I have nowhere to send this letter and no reason to believe you wish to receive it. I write it only for myself. And so I will hide it away along with all the things left unsaid and undone between us.
Jordan Belfort: Sell me this pen. Brad: Write me your name on this napkin. Jordan Belfort: I can't, I don't have a pen. Brad: There you go, it's a matter of supply and demand.
I want every idea I have to make me money. I want every post I write to have 10,000 Facebook likes. I want every talk I give to have people laughing at all the right jokes. I want everyone to like me all the time.
Nobody wants to read about the honest lawyer down the street who does real estate loans and wills. If you want to sell books, you have to write about the interesting lawyers - the guys who steal all the money and take off. That's the fun stuff.
I fell into playwriting accidentally, took some classes in it, and also took creative writing classes, but I really didn't expect it to be a career because I didn't believe there was a way to make money as a playwright without being lucky and I didn'...
Why should a novelist not also be a historian? To force unnatural divisions within the English language is to work against its capacious and accommodating nature. To expect a writer to produce only novels, or only histories, is equivalent to demandin...
My poems always begin with a metaphor, but my way into the metaphor may be a word, an image, even a sound. And I rarely know the nature of the metaphor when I begin to write, but there is an attentiveness that a writer develops, a sudden alertness th...
Really important books to me are the classics. I try very hard to read them well - you know, especially once I got serious about writing. So, reading Tolstoy several times - 'War and Peace,' 'The Kreutzer Sonata' - all those were really important to ...
