Top 1200 Creative Writers Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

I find it hard to write with writers sometimes because of their way of writing. Some are heavily focused on structure, but I have more of a 'Let's go with it' mindset. I like to be creative, and when I hear something that inspires me, I'll come up with a melody, a lyric to that melody, and take it from there. I try to keep it open.

I can well imagine that certain writers, even writers that we'd consider today very great writers, may not necessarily have tested highly on IQ just because of their numerical skills, or maybe they may not be very good at memory, and are not particularly good at these kinds of tests.

There's a double standard between writers and readers. Readers can be unfaithful to writers anytime they like, but writers must never ever be unfaithful to the readers.

One feature about Los Angeles that I particularly love is the chance for association with all kinds of creative artists, a thing I never before have had. I certainly do love a number of the writers, the painters, the musicians, and the sculptors that I meet here. ... Next to the sunshine, I appreciate it the most of anything in California.

The problem with reality TV is that creative writers are not involved; TV folks are, and some journalists who will only mine the surface of subjects. Hard work necessary for discovering and delineating the intimacies of the subjects they capture is mostly avoided.

Because we are four creative people - four writers - there was no way that we were ever going to be satiated doing the same thing over and again. Change was inevitable for us. And a very natural thing.

I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail.

Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.

If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers.

Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers.

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.

Some writers such as John Cheever and Raymond Carver seem to draw artistic energy from analyzing the realm of their own experiences - their social circles and memories and mores. I'm one of those who draw creative energy from the opposite.

Ilike ideas writers have that I might not have written. Writers are there for a reason... to write for me.

I had a fascination with the back side of the business, and the creative process always fascinated me. Vince gave me an opportunity in '98 to sit in the production meetings. He would talk creative with me, and we had this creative rapport.

I am not retiring. Writers don't retire. Writers never stop writing.

I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them; most writers groups moonlight as support groups for the kind of people who think that writing is therapeutic. Writing is the exact opposite of therapy.

There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda.

It is deeply unfair to task writers of color with unique responsibilities that we don't assign to all writers.

I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers.

I guess when I was younger, I'd have assumed that in 2008 music would be full of great writers following in the tradition of the young great writers of the '60s and '70s, but it hasn't turned out that way, or at least there are no other writers around that I look at and think: 'Wow, I'm outclassed, I need to get out of this business.'

I often wonder if all the writers who are alcoholics drink a lot because they aren't writing. It is not because they are writers that they are drinking, but because they are writers who are not writing.

Indonesian writers are so far behind in terms of global exposure compared with the Philippines and Japanese writers.

Everyone is creative, but me and my colleagues are using a different definition of creativity than is implied when people say they are not creative. We believe that people are being creative if they are bringing out their highest inner resources to improve their lives and those around them. Those who are living from their core, and doing what they are destined to do, are being creative, no matter how mundane their work or profession might seem.

I'm one of the few Black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has allowed me to speak in a kind of free way. But most African American writers don't have that. They don't have that opportunity, they don't have that.

Every opportunity I've had to work and act with incredibly talented directors, like Dean Holland was on 'Love,' and the writers and creators of that show, Judd Apatow, Paul Rust and Leslie Arfin, have been incredible learning experiences that have informed my creative process.

From my years of teaching creative writing, I know that new writers take the setting for granted, as simply a place to set the action, but setting is a vital element in fiction writing and deserves serious treatment.

Ninety-five percent of all writers who write do not get published, but 100 percent of all writers write because they have a voice in their head. The vast majority of writers simply write because they have to.

Certainly, historically, there has been more attention given in the international media to Indian English-language writers than to Pakistani English-language writers. But that, in my opinion, was justified by the sheer number of excellent writers coming from India and the Indian diaspora.

I have learned to respect ideas, wherever they come from. Often they come from clients. Account executives often have big creative ideas, regardless of what some writers think.

I'm definitely more influenced by European writers than I am by American writers, there's no doubt about that.

A lot of my friends do creative things and are doing really well at what they do - some writers, some artists. I'm in a driven circle. I've had a lot of opportunities that other people wouldn't necessarily have and seen some cool places.

It feels as though a very disproportionate number of main characters are writers, because that's what the writer knows. Fair enough. But nothing bothers me more in a movie than an actor playing a writer, and you just know he's not a writer. Writers recognize other writers. Ethan Hawke is too hot to be a writer.

Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.

Most writers stick to what they know. The black experience is our experience, so it's not that challenging for us. That's why sometimes you'll see writers that start off telling black stories, but later branch out into other material. People say they "sell out." No, they evolve as writers.

I think there is a huge difference between writers who have very big sales, and writers who have small sales. Even writers with very high reputations, even Nobel prize winners, often sell in very low figures.

As writers, our craft makes us sit alone at a desk and hammer away at our novel. Doing that day in and day out makes it really easy to forget that there's a whole community of writers out there, and they love contributing to other writers' success!

The effects of MFA programs, and the rise of creative writing instruction more generally, are far more diffuse than people think. Even if you're a writer who has avoided institutions your whole life, you're still going to be reading a lot of writers who have MFAs, and are affiliated with universities.

The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity. . .

Writers learn their craft, above all, from the work of other writers. From reading.

In the 1930s, the government paid writers to interview 80- and 90-year-old former slaves, and I read those accounts. I came away realizing - not surprisingly - that many slave masters were sadists who spent a lot of time thinking up creative ways of hurting people.

As far as my creative urge is concerned, I do sit down and write my own music...I'll tell you a writer who I think is a genius: Ray Stevens. He comes up with some of the most fantastic novelty ideas. Dolly Parton also writes well. I like a lot of songs, a lot of writers.

In TV, it's so much more about the writers because they're the ones creating the universe. The writers are the ones who know what's up.

I've been known to write 10 pages a day for 10 days running before I take a breath. I am not a disciplined writer. I'm one of those people who laughingly call themselves inspirational writers, which basically means someone who has no control over their own creative process.

..few writers like other writers' works. The only time they like them is when they are dead or if they have been for a long time. Writers only like to sniff their own turds. I am one of those. I don't even like to talk to writers, look at them or worse, listen to them. And the worst is to drink with them, they slobber all over themselves, really look piteous, look like they are searching for the wing of the mother. I'd rather think about death than about other writers. Far more pleasant.

Typically, there's this perspective among writers - and black writers: there's this idea that there is one person - and maybe beyond writers - among blacks, there is always one person who everyone should go to learn about all things black.

Writers always have confidence issues - it comes with the territory. We never know where we fit in, or what the actual value of our work might be. So we hit lulls, or slogs. Throw in the idea that many creative people are somewhat manic-depressive, and it can get pretty dark at times.

I'm creative in my own life. I'm creative when I step out the door. I'm creative when I pick up a glass. Do you know what I mean? I'm one of those dreadful people who probably should have been born at the end of the 19th century and been in cafe society. That would have suited me fine.

There are so many different types of writers. It's just sheer coincidence that they're all called writers.

Writers, at least writers of fiction, are always full of anxiety and worry.

There's so much control, so many executive producers, so many people looking over their shoulder, so many people trying to second-guess the boss. The space for writers and directors and actors to be creative is zilch.

Fiction needs writers and readers, and writers should cultivate both.

I feel like if writers used writing as therapy we'd have a ton of happy writers.

It's just difficult to see that people want to be like the actors and the performers and the politicians who are - who they see all the time, but the people that are probably having the most fun are the writers and the directors and the producers and the scientists, right, the people in the back that are getting to do the creative process.

We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it's the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.

[On the writers she admires:] I prefer dead writers, because I don't see them at parties.

Creativity is not a solitary movement. That is its power. Whatever is touched by it, whoever hears it, sees it, senses it, knows it, it's fed. That is why beholding someone else's creative word, images, idea, fills us up, and inspires us to our own creative work. A single creative act has the potential to feed a continent. One creative act can cause a torrent to break through stone.

I was part of a writers' collective with 21 writers and filmmakers called the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. We had our own office space in this old converted dog and cat hospital, and we had a basketball hoop outside. I'd bring my dog to work every day and write.

I think when writers play with dragons, we are simply doing what fantasy writers have always done.

Creative arts, new inventions, and new ideas spring from those blessed with imagination, and magic stimulates imagination. It is no coincidence that many artists, writers, and dancers are interested in magic.

Writers, and particularly female writers, have to fight for the conditions they need to work.