A Quote by Jenji Kohan

I think great writers should write great shows, and I have trouble with, like, what you are in life shouldn't automatically make you what you do in your art. It doesn't necessarily translate.

Jenji Kohan

Quote Topics

Art Automatically Great Great Show Great Writers Life Like Make Necessarily Should Shows Think Translate Trouble Write Writers Your

Quote Author

Jenji Kohan
American - Director
Born: July 5, 1969

The impulse to write the poem, that impulse is a great dramatic impulse. But hell, anybody could write a play. I do know this: all writers are not dramatists. You may be a great writer, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're a dramatist. Very few people have done both.

August Wilson

I think even great writers only write two books that you might like. When I think of my touchstone writers like Saul Bellow, I think of 'Henderson the Rain King.' With Don DeLillo, I think of 'Libra.'

Ethan Canin

I think you write only out of a great trouble. A trouble of excitement, a trouble of enlargement, a trouble of displacement in yourself.

Eleanor Clark

Writing is not a great profession as a lot of writers proclaim. I write because this is something I can do. Another thing—very often I think a lot of writers write because they have failed to do other things. How many writers can’t drive? A lot. They’re not practical. They are not capable in everyday life.

Ha Jin

I always felt that it was easier to take a funny person and teach them to write television than to take somebody who was a television writer and make them funny. And I discovered a lot of great writers that went on to do a lot of great shows like 'Seinfeld,' 'Friends,' you know, 'Three and a Half Men.'

Roseanne Barr

There's this message to comedians in particular, that you shouldn't write it, and a television writer should write it. And that's a prevailing conventional wisdom that I think is really wrong. That's not to say that television writers aren't great, but I think that the belief that some comedy writer's going to be able to capture your voice is naive.

Jim Gaffigan

I won't necessarily make new music because when you make a record there are these great expectations on the side of the record company who are going to produce your record, promoters that are going to do your shows. They want you to do interviews, they want you to play shows. I mean, they want it to be a campaign.

Black Francis

Great trouble breeds great art, I think.

Jesmyn Ward

I'm not going to live my life unhappy and why should he and we talk about it and I think what's great about the film is that it shows is the meaning of family doesn't have to be as traditional as it once was, like you can make a family.

Nia Long

I don't think we have to suffer personally to make great art. If you're prepared and organized, and you know what you're looking for, you can make great art and then go home.

Noah Hawley

I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said that you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)

Anne Lamott

People should think about their closets like they think about a stock portfolio. There are things you want to invest in; you make those investments, and those are your blue chips. So you should invest in a great pair of jeans, in a great cashmere sweater.

Jennifer Hyman

You should never settle for what you think is just good. You should drive the editors and writers and everybody nuts until it's great. And if you don't go for great, you won't end up with good. You've got to go beyond your wildest dreams because the exigencies of filmmaking are going to smash you into the ordinary.

Fred Schepisi

The 'American Idol' and 'X Factor' shows, they're great shows. But I think I need to make a show like that, directed straight to the hood, to the artists that don't get the attention, that don't have the money to make themselves representable.

Snoop Dogg

I think fashion is intensely personal. It should be. It should give a woman a creative outlet, it should give her a little bit of an escape, and it should give her a little bit of individuality that she can add to her life. I don't mean redoing your entire closet. I mean that a great shoe or a great handbag or a great top or a great coat or jacket can change everything.