Quotes on Writers

Some writers sit down without a thought of what they are going to say, and they go through draft after draft.

There are writers, and I know some of them, who are very disciplined. Who write, like, four pages a day, every day. And it doesn't matter if their dog got run over by a car that day, or they won the Irish sweepstakes. I'm not one of those writers.

Sexism kind of predisposes us to see men's work as more important than women's, and it is a problem, I guess, as writers, we have to change.

The hardest thing to teach young writers is that it's wonderful to tell your truth. And that's what you should do. But it damn well better be beautiful.

Writers, especially those of us with roots in other countries, are rarely left to ourselves. We are asked to declare our allegiances, or they are determined for us.

I would dream. I focused all my attention on going to America. The subculture, James Dean, the rock n' roll, the beat writers.

I get invited to do panels with other Brooklyn writers to discuss what it's like to be a writer in Brooklyn. I expect it's like writing in Manhattan, but there aren't as many tourists walking very slowly in front of you when you step out for coffee. It's like writing in Paris, but there are fewer people speaking French.

There are now 30-year-old Mexican writers who do great novels in which Mexico isn't even mentioned.

There is something really horrific for any human being who feels he is being consumed by other people. I'm talking about a writer's critics, who don't address what you've written, but want to probe into your existence and magnify the trivia of your life without any sense of humor, without any sense of context.

There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda. Propaganda can be written by anybody, including dictators.

Gay writers now have both a sense of history and the fables that allows them to dwell in the realms of the ridiculous and at the same time talk seriously about things.

Like so many writers I started writing stories because I didn't have much time for anything else.

White, older showrunners told me, 'Why do you want to hire an all-Latinx writers room? Hire who's best for the show - don't get caught up in that.' And I was like, 'No.' For such an intimate show about the details of a culture? You can't fake that. The room needs to reflect the makeup of the show.

Take your time, however long the book needs. I've seen a lot of promising careers go into decline because writers succumbed to the pressure to write faster than was comfortable for them or the story.

Every writer follows a theme, and mine is survival. If you can't figure out what a writer's theme is, look at the books you are attracted to.

There are so many different things out there trying to hook our attention, we writers have to be very selective and make certain that it is coming from inside out, not outside in.

Writing for television is completely different from movie scriptwriting. A movie is all about the director's vision, but television is a writer's medium.

I think my family and closest friends are learning about my need to withdraw, and I am learning how to restore and store my energy to both serve the community to the best of my ability and to serve my writer's heart.

I am very willing to admit that I have some poetical abilities, and as few - if any - writers, either moral or political, are intimately acquainted with the classes of mankind among whom I have chiefly mingled, I may have seen men and manners in a different phasis from what is common, which may assist originality of thought.

I've met many, many writers who say they would never write about their family, never write about people they did not totally make up. But that is not the composition of my character.

Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds.