Writers want to summarize: What does this mean? What did we learn from this? That's a very 19th-century way of thinking about art, because it assumes that it should make our lives better or teach us something.
Laurie Anderson

My theory is that I decided to be a writer when I was about seven, but of course it is not as simple as that. Like most writers, I had to work at other things to earn a living and wrote mainly in the evenings, often very late at night, for many years.
Margaret Mahy

Writers always know whether you like them or not.
Leslie Fiedler

Country people give me more than writers, and country places than towns.
Leonard Alfred George Strong

Nothing spooky or terrible happened on set, but we were told to say it had. We were giving a press conference and the writers were going on about these terrible things that supposedly happened while we were filming.
Margot Kidder

I know that many writers have had to write under censorship and yet produced good novels; for instance, Cervantes wrote Don Quixote under Catholic censorship.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante

All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.
Lloyd Alexander

We sat around on a hotel balcony with a bottle of wine and tried to figure out how you would go about blowing up a planet. That's the kind of conversations science fiction writers have when they get together. We don't talk about football or anything like that.
Kevin J. Anderson

We do not have many intellectuals who can speak out for us internationally. We have no writers who are recognized, respected and loved outside the Arab world.
Tahar Ben Jelloun

I grew up with an artist father, and my parents' friends were also mainly artists or writers, so he connects what I do with his example.
Jonathan Lethem

Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories.
Jeffery Deaver

At the same time, I think books create a sort of network in the reader's mind, with one book reinforcing another. Some books form relationships. Other books stand in opposition. No two writers or readers have the same pattern of interaction.
Margaret Mahy

I think it must be very hard to be one of the new young writers who are urged to put themselves forward when it may be the last thing on earth they'd be good at.
Anne Tyler

I think that like all writers - and if any writer disagrees with this, then he is not a writer - I write primarily for myself.
Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Yet, it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love, lust, longing; joy, rage, fear; triumph, yearning and confusion.
Tony Snow

What we need is more women writers, writing for older women. There are some actresses who have production companies and create their own material, and I truly admire that.
Kathleen Turner

I love new writing, new blood, modern works by unknown writers.
Joseph Fiennes

Get more women producers, writers, directors. Why should we expect men to do it for us? They can't.
Kathleen Turner

All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour.
Ben Kingsley

I tell writers to keep reading, reading, reading. Read widely and deeply. And I tell them not to give up even after getting rejection letters. And only write what you love.
Anita Diament