I love writing traditional magazine pieces, and especially their breadth of reporting and the deliberateness of the writing. – Susan Orlean
I finally get to the place where the book has matured in my mind and I can hardly wait to start writing it. Then I just sit down and I start. I hit the go button. I have an outline, which is 70 pages, but I don’t look at it. I never have to look at it. – Stephen J. Cannell
I had developed this habit of writing scenarios as a hobby. I would find out which stories had been sold to be made into films and I would write my own treatment and then compare it. – Satyajit Ray
Writing is a way of getting at the things most people would prefer to escape. Writing takes me to the center of life. That’s my invitation to my readers as well. – Steven Millhauser
Having been an actor and a writer for so long – 20 years or so – I felt that it would be daft to go to one’s grave without having directed. It’s a natural extension of writing and acting, and so I knew it would happen one day. – Stephen Fry
Writing for adults often means just increasing the swearing – but find an alternative to swearing and you’ve probably got a better line. – Steven Moffat
Writing in other voices is almost Japanese in the sense that there’s a certain formality there which allows me to sidestep the embarrassment of directly expressing to complete strangers the most intimate details of my life. – Suzanne Vega
Series television is kind of intensive in terms of time. You fall hard for TV writing, but it’s almost love-hate. You’re under pressure all the time, but that pressure gets interesting things out of you that are, you know, mysterious. – Winnie Holzman
The whole thing about writing a play is that it’s all about controlling the flow of information traveling from the stage to the audience. It’s a stream of information, but you’ve got your hand on the tap, and you control in which order the audience receives it and with what emphasis, and how you hold it all together. – Tom Stoppard
I believe innately in the human spirit being a powerful and positive thing. And that just comes out, whether you like it or not. It comes out in the writing. – Simon Beaufoy
I don’t ever know where I’m going. Because one of the wonderful things about writing, which is different than working in programming, you don’t need to know. You could just write and discover where you’re going. And it’s a great deal of fun. – Walter Mosley
I’d been writing poems for many years, but most of them I didn’t like. Then, when I was 23, I wrote one I did like, sent it to ‘The Paris Review’ – the highest publication I could think of – and they accepted it. No other moment in my literary life has quite come close to that. – Siri Hustvedt
If you watch home videos, at 4 years old, I was doing nothing but being the entertainer. Singing ‘Boot Scootin’ Boogie’ in the living room. Then, I guess, just by the grace of God I started writing songs, and somebody happened to like them. – Thomas Rhett
Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing. – Wayne Dyer
Writing about identity can be like maneuvering through a minefield, even when considering contemporary figures who have discussed the subject themselves. – William J. Mann
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. – Shonda Rhimes
I think of myself as writing realist American fiction. ‘Cynical but hopeful’ wouldn’t be the worst thing I’ve ever been called. – Walter Kirn