writers quotes

I don’t know if she should worry too much, I mean some of our greatest writers have had movies made of their books, lots of Hemingway novels were turned into movies, it doesn’t hurt the book.

When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they’re just infested with lots of stuff.

I don’t even like showing my stuff to publishers and editors much.

Writers and books are cheap dates, especially when you compare the cost of a book with a ticket to the opera – or an NHL game.

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan’s writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

I know that some books and some writers, you can pretty much draw a square around it and say, ‚Nobody under 40,‘ or ‚Nobody under 25.‘ With my books, it always has been, and continues to be, spread right across the board, and I think the operative term is ‚reader.‘

I’m evangelical on the subject of some chefs and writers.

It cannot be said often enough that science fiction as a genre is incredibly educational – and I’m speaking the written science fiction, not ‚Star Trek.‘ Science fiction writers tend to fill their books if they’re clever with little bits of interesting stuff and real stuff.

Writers have to put up with this editor thing; it is ageless and eternal and wrong.

Today, writers want to impress other writers.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.

All writers are going to have to learn more about science, because it’s such an interesting part of their environment.

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

Writers speak stench.

From my close observation of writers… they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

When I worked on a magazine, I learned that there are many, many writers writing that can’t write at all; and they keep on writing all the cliches and bromides and 1890 plots, and poems about Spring and poems about Love, and poems they think are modern because they are done in slang or staccato style, or written with all the ‚i’s‘ small.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?