Top 1200 Irish Writers Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

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

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.

Not to Learn Irish is to miss the opportunity of understanding what life in this country has meant and could mean in a better future. It is to cut oneself off from ways of being at home. If we regard self-understanding, mutual understanding, imaginative enhancement, cultural diversity and a tolerant political atmosphereas a desirable attainments, we should remember that a knowledge of the Irish language is an essential element in their realisation.

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

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.

I'm just following the Irish tradition of songwriting, the Irish way of life, the human way of life. Cram as much pleasure into life, and rail against the pain you have to suffer as a result. Or scream and rant with the pain, and wait for it to be taken away with beautiful pleasure . . .

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

British rule depends upon repression and collaboration and the Irish people should recognise that those who collaborate with Britain in exchange for a slice of the cake will implement British policy and remain silent when Irish people are murdered and oppressed. It is they who are responsible for prolonging the war in Ireland. Without the quislings, without the collaborators, we would already have reached freedom.

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

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

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.

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

Writers, as they gain success, feel like outsiders because writers don't come together in real groups.

I've taken a lot of crap. That's just the way life is. There are going to be writers who like you and writers who despise you.

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

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

My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms.

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.

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

I've never really understood that whole thing of writers avoiding other writers' novels while they're working on their own.

The Germans made just about every bad investment you could have made in the last 10 years. They invested in Icelandic banks. They invested in Greek government bonds. They were heavy into Irish banks, big into Irish banks, and they bought U.S. subprime mortgage bonds.

My father and his brothers and sisters were childhood Irish jig champions in the Bronx. At our family celebrations, they all get out and do the jig. And of course, the younger generation, me and my cousins and my brothers, we have our own Americanized renditions of the Irish jig, which is a bit more like 'Lord of the Dance.'

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.'

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.

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

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.

When I look at the list of my favorite works, writers who are women do tend to outnumber writers who are men for whatever reason.

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.

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.

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

There was so much anti-Irish sentiment not just from other kids at the school I went to in Britain, but also the teachers themselves. I remember very clearly a lot of the things people said to me and my sisters. And of course those sentiments go back a long way. When my dad visited London in the 50s and was looking for somewhere to stay, there were signs outside boarding houses that said "No blacks, no Irish."

When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.

TV is where writers get to tell interesting stories. Because writers, for the most part, run television.

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

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

I'm overwhelmed by writers. Most people aren't impressed by writers, but if you can draw a cartoon or a picture, they think you're magic.

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

I envy certain writers, because there are writers who do go into a kind of different zone, where the writing isn't controlled anymore.

There are these boutique writers out there who think if they are not writing their novels sitting at a bistro with their laptops, then they're not real writers. That's ridiculous.

I would say the next imminent hot writers are often the writers from the decade before you were born.

Hillary Clinton was actually inducted into the Irish American Hall of Fame yesterday. Hillary said she's very proud of her Irish heritage or her Italian heritage or her Asian heritage. Whatever it takes to seal the deal with you guys. I've got to get into that Oval Office.

All these mountains of Irish dead, all these corpses mangled beyond recognition, all these arms, legs, eyes, ears, fingers, toes, hands, all these shivering putrefying bodies and portions of bodies once warm living and tender parts of Irish men and youths - all these horrors in Flanders or the Gallipoli Peninsula, are all items in the price Ireland pays for being part of the British Empire.

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.

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

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!

There are all kinds of writers. The best writers write children's books.

Bullshit, as you Americans say. He's Irish. The Irish say bullshit too.

Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy

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

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

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.

Unemployed writers have muses. Employed writers just sweat.

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.

I do go back to Ireland, and I'll probably be doing a film in Ireland in January, and I guess that kind of keeps me classified as 'the Irish actor,' but the last four or five projects that I've been in are either American or English, so I don't feel terribly trapped in that. But sometimes, yeah, you would like to not be called 'the Irish actor.' You'd prefer to just be called 'the actor.'

I think of sports writers as mediating between two worlds. Athletes probably think of sports writers as not macho enough. And people in high culture probably think of sports writers as jocks or something. They are in an interestingly complex position in which they have to mediate the world of body and the world of words.

I was raised Irish Catholic, but I don't consider myself Irish Catholic: I consider myself me, an American.

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