Top 100 The Writers Quotes
#1. I can't stand it when a player whines to me or his teammates or his wife or the writers or anyone else. A whiner is almost always wrong. A winner never whines.
Paul Brown
#2. The writers have slowly taken the show, with subjects other gay shows have dived right into, slowly. It was over a year before Will even started to date.
Sean Hayes
#3. The painters could be identified by dirty fingernails; the writers by conversation in labored monosyllables and aggressive vulgarities which disguised their minds.
William Gaddis
#4. What's great is that a lot of us are playing so against type in this, and it's awesome. All of the writers put faith in the fact that we know what we're doing. We have creative freedom, and it's awesome. I think it all worked out. Everybody on the show is so good.
Laura Prepon
#5. Movies, particularly the big hit movies, are all just special effects. But on television, the writers are in control of the shows, and they control the scripts.
Larry Cohen
#6. The good stories, of course, write themselves. And somebody wants to know who are the really good writers, and how many of them there are. There aren't any. Most of the writers are likeable frauds. Some are unlikable frauds.
R.A. Lafferty
#7. I was a pretty good fighter. But it was the writers who made me great.
Jack Dempsey
#8. Most of the writers I know have somehow managed to stay in touch with that inner child who's never heard of such a thing as an internal editor.
JoAnn Ross
#9. The prophets and the writers of the Psalms were clear that God was continuing to work in the universe and in all history. They declared that He had created the universe.
Kenneth Scott Latourette
#10. A pilot is like the most extensive dress rehearsal you can ever imagine, because the writers are learning about the actors, the actors are learning about the characters.
Kim Cattrall
#11. And the truth is that if a writer is successful, you gain readers. It benefits all the writers. It's important for all the writers that as many of us as possible be successful.
Isabel Allende
#12. I don't find any real rivalries with crime and thriller writers anyway. That might sound a little Pollyanna, but for the most part the writers I compete with, if you want to use that word, it's a pretty friendly rivalry. I think we all realise that the boat rises and sinks together.
Harlan Coben
#13. The first thing is that we're being attacked by both the Writers Guild and the Producers Guild. Both of these groups are trying to diminish the importance and strength of the director. They're trying to do it through both frontal and side attacks.
John Frankenheimer
#14. Increasingly, there are those of us who write from outside the center, and those are the writers that I'm most interested in because they bring me into worlds that I did not previously know. And that, as a writer, is what I try to create.
Aminatta Forna
#15. All the writers and producers around us that gave us the environment where we could play. They were able to provide us with a place where we could take chances to play with things, go against the grain and do things that people don't always do.
Matthew Ashford
#16. The humor is essentially dark for a cartoon and sophisticated. But at the same time, being a cartoon gives the writers more freedom than in a normal sitcom. It always pushes the line that, despite human failings, the Simpsons are really decent people.
Dan Castellaneta
#17. I broke in with four hits, and the writers promptly declared they had seen the new Ty Cobb. It took me only a few days to correct that impression.
Casey Stengel
#18. Among the writers of antiquity there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived than those who have employed themselves in satire, under whatever dress it may appear.
Joseph Addison
#19. As for the writers who have influenced me they are many. Hemingway, Chandler, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, William Goldman, Flannery O'Conner, Carson McCullers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and so many others. As a kid Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard.
Joe R. Lansdale
#20. Anyway, the way political history is passed down is influenced and spoiled by the closeness of the writers to the political figures that they're writing about. It's a sad state of affairs, but there's probably more veracity of reporting in my work than there is in the newspapers.
Raymond Pettibon
#21. Remember, when the writers refer to themselves as 'we' and to the reader as 'you,' this is two against one.
Judith Rascoe
#22. I believe that the writers of Genesis had detected the inherent selfishness in human nature that I propose is in our genes, and invented the myth of original sin to account for it. It's an image. I am not acting as an exegete - I don't interpret scripture.
Christian De Duve
#23. Most of the writers I like just intimidate and humble me but in that there's a good deal of inspiration to be had as well.
Henry Rollins
#24. The writers job is like solving a puzzle, and finally arriving at a solution is a tremendous satisfaction.
William Zinsser
#25. It hurt me a great deal. It put a lot of pressure on me because I was at a young age and the writers around here and throughout the league starting comparing me to Cobb. It put a lot of pressure on me.
Al Kaline
#26. Being an actor, we're so dependent on the writers.
Amy Ryan
#27. I remember a lecture from one of my lit classes about a theory called "Reader Response", which basically says: More often than not, it's the readers --- not the writers --- who determine what a book means.
Kelly Corrigan
#28. A lot of directors keep writers away because the writers know the script better than anybody, obviously they do, and they have certain intents. But a lot of people would be surprised to know that writers are pretty flexible when it comes to their work.
Glenn Ficarra
#29. I had to produce a complete page - or two or three - in one day. I took a lot of pride in my work, and I hated to do a mediocre job. Evidently, some of the writers enjoyed my work best of all for that very reason.
Joe Shuster
#30. The writers of the French enlightenment had deliberately used blasphemy as a weapon, refusing to accept the power of the Church to set limiting points on thought.
Salman Rushdie
#31. The writers and actors on 'Friends' were notoriously particular about what made it onto the air.
Warren Littlefield
#33. In many senses, 'Borgen' was a very democratic show. I was always invited to hear the writers' thoughts for the next episodes and allowed to comment on them.
Birgitte Hjort Sorensen
#34. Acting is really about showing up that day and telling the writers what you feel like saying.
Tina Fey
#35. I ended up on 'Heroes' because I auditioned for the part like everybody else, but the writers were writing the role of Daphne, which was originally called Joy.
Brea Grant
#36. I would say that the writers I like and trust have at the base of their prose something called the English sentence. An awful lot of modern writing seems to me to be a depressed use of language. Once, I called it "vow-of-poverty prose." No, give me the king in his countinghouse. Give me Updike.
Martin Amis
#37. It's not really about confidence. It's just something that isn't really in the vocabulary of what goes on at work. The writers write and the actors act.
Simon Helberg
#38. When you work on big commercial movies, of course there's more money involved and you can still do some good work. But with an independent, you get films that are really close to the writers' and directors' heart. Somehow it becomes a little deeper. A little more meat and not as much flash.
Dennis Haysbert
#39. The writers who have nothing to say, are the ones you can buy, the others have too high a price.
Walter Lippmann
#40. Cheers was one of the first shows where I paid attention to the writers because their [work] was better than everything else I was watching. The writers weren't afraid to let a joke fall slightly flat if it advanced the characters.
Shawn Ryan
#41. They had me all happy, singing. It was very awkward. I think the writers are frantically planning something appropriate to honor him, but we don't know what.
Kristin Chenoweth
#42. Pick up any newspaper in the morning. Count the words in the lead sentences. There will be at least 25 in all of them: Guaranteed. The writers just want to tell you how many degrees they have from this college or that university.
Jimmy Breslin
#43. I always look for the writers and what they're creating. If it's something I don't buy, it's really hard for me to play it. To me, it has to be grounded in some sort of reality. It's really hard to go to these extreme places if they're not grounded.
Sarah Clarke
#44. In TV, you don't know everything. The writers only give you scripts before you shoot the episodes. They keep you on your nerve.
Yasmine Al Masri
#45. The writers I admired and still admire were not carpenters, but more like sculptors. Their art was and is a real probing of real and troubling human confusions.
Wallace Stegner
#46. I've got to be out doing a million things. That's how I find stories. That's how I get the relationships and get the projects that I get with the writers, the directors.
Dana Brunetti
#47. Women are the essential part of the theater but the writers are not writing about women. I think they're too perplexed about the whole female situation probably.
Bette Davis
#48. Every country has the writers she requires and deserves, which is why Nicaragua, in two hundred years of literacy, has produced one writer-a mediocre poet.
Paul Theroux
#49. So many of the people I admired - the musicians, the artists, the writers - created their greatest works not during a period of happiness and contentment, but during a period of struggle.
Adam Braun
#50. In the writers' room, when we talk about each episode, we first talk about the character journey of the episode.
Marc Guggenheim
#51. But it also became the experience, or was the experience, of the writers who were attracted to this kind of humor. They're all men or women who come from the same kind of experience in their own lives.
Norman Lear
#52. During the writers' strike in 2007, we put on our own SNL episode there with old sketches. Michael Cera hosted, our musical guest was Yo La Tengo, and we gave Lorne a birthday cake as he sat in the audience.
Amy Poehler
#53. What the writers do, and we hopefully can bring to life, is that they present characters who, on the surface, aren't always heroic and their acts aren't always devoid of selfishness.
Charlie Cox
#54. I'm not one of those actors who likes to analyze things too much, so I trust what the writers are doing with the characters, in order to give them their journey. My job is to come in and try to make those words on the page come alive on camera.
John Barrowman
#55. The writers who accomplish most are those who compel thought on the highest and most profoundly interesting subjects.
John Lancaster Spalding
#56. Now gae your wa'sTho'anes as gude As ever happit flesh and blude, Yet part we maunthe case sae hard is, Amang the writers and the bardies That lang they'll brook the auld I trow, Or neibours cry,'Weel brook the new'.
Edna Ferber
#57. I think it helps the writers to sell their books if they announce my attachment. But it doesn't mean that I'm going to make the movies in the next year or two or three.
James Franco
#58. The thing I try to get across to the writers - and I do a lot of writing, too - is that when I do stand-up, nothing I talk about is funny. Everything is really sad and tragic and then I make it funny.
Chris Rock
#59. What's more important to 'SNL': comedy or buzz? To the writers, players and guest hosts, it's probably the former; to Lorne Michaels and the suits at NBC, it's ultimately probably the latter.
Rachel Sklar
#60. If you are not a writer, you will not understand the difficulties of writing. If you are not a writer, you will not know the fears and hopes of the writers you teach.
Mem Fox
#61. If you're doing an hour-long show, you're working movie hours, doing a 12-15-hour day. We work three or four hours a day, and get every third or fourth week off to give the writers time to write. It's the cushiest job in Hollywood.
Eric McCormack
#62. The better the writers the less they will speak about what they have written themselves.
Ernest Hemingway,
#63. The writers on my team and the producers and executive producer should be called talent. We anchor four hours on Saturday and three on Sunday. How they do that astonishes me.
Poppy Harlow
#64. Stories don't end with the writers, however many started the race.
Patrick Ness
#65. Humor is like a rhythm; it's like music. And you throw a couple of extra syllables in, you wreck the beat and you kill the laugh. So I try to follow the writers very carefully because I know how carefully they worked to do it that way.
Betty White
#66. I would say the next imminent hot writers are often the writers from the decade before you were born.
Fiona Shaw
#67. Because life, as Pablo Picasso averred, 'is a very bad novel', it has to be reworked through the writers' suffering into something much more meaningful, much more valuable. A life lived and relived, then, emitting intensity and beauty only achievable by a journey through pain.
Cirilo F. Bautista
#68. I think writing is a process that starts long before the writers are actually writers and probably goes on long afterward. It's rather like the way the Arabs weave rugs. They don't stop. They just cut them off at a certain spot on the loom. There is no particular beginning or end.
Jeanette Winterson
#69. The muscles that writers need for film are very different from TV muscles. Now, when I hire the writers and put the writers' room together, I know where their muscles need to be.
M. Night Shyamalan
#70. The challenging thing is that we go home after doing the run-through and the writers stay there working, so sometimes I get script changes delivered to me at midnight. It's constantly shifting.
Jillian Bach
#71. Many artists and writers have used cannabis for creative stimulation - from the writers of the world's religious masterpieces to our most irreverent satirists.
Jack Herer
#72. When the writers themselves are a bit out of control, and their lives are collapsing around them, they seem to rejoice in misery and celebrate the wrong sort of things.
John Rhys-Davies
#73. Auditions are an opportunity to play and go in there and bring the character to life. The writers have it stuck in their head and haven't seen it jump off the page.
Jodie Sweetin
#74. Imagination, which is the Eldorado of the poet and of the novel-writer, often proves the most pernicious gift to the individuals who compose the talkers instead of the writers in society.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess Of Blessington
#75. When I present those clip shows and movie mistakes and things, the persona the writers adopt for me is unimpressed, superior, very sarcastic - I'm not any of that. I can do it, but that's not what I'm like.
Robert Webb
#76. It's very much a back and forth conversation between the fans and the writers, between the writers and the powers that be. Their opinions, especially when expressed online or via correspondence, are important and are taken into consideration.
Wentworth Miller
#77. The truth is that the writers who most influenced me weren't people categorized as crime writers. I'd say I learned more from John O'Hara, who isn't much read today but whose short stories I really admired, and Hemingway, who I think has lasted pretty good.
Elmore Leonard
#78. When Ted Williams was here, inducted into the Hall of Fame 37 years ago, he said he must have earned it, because he didn't win it because of his friendship with the writers. I guess in that way, I'm proud to be in this company that way.
Eddie Murray
#79. The writers want to know were you made your mistake, no how well your curve is breaking.
Alvin Dark
#80. I think the writers give us different people to work with, different situation scenarios to be in and there's always that fun balance of, you know, trying to keep it light and, you know, light-hearted and put in the comedy while trying to make it into drama.
Hayden Panettiere
#81. My experience tells me that any time you hear people laughing on a sitcom, it's the writers who happen to be closest to the microphones - not the audience.
Steven Weber
#82. I love working on the fly when the writers come up with new jokes on show nights. It's exciting. I love it so much.
Allison Janney
#83. Granted, the writers, directors, producers, and that community make a great deal of money. But they might be choosing to do a whole lot of other things for the living they make.
Norman Lear
#84. The air in the library rooms was silent, full of ideas, the thinking of the writers of books, the thinking of the readers of books.
Cynthia Voigt
#85. I think it always makes for great television when two characters actually take time to realize that they want to be with each other. You have to leave it to the writers to know what makes great television.
Candice Patton
#86. All Christians have access to the spiritual riches found in the Scriptures, which, after all, were written amid the spiritual turmoil and social conflicts of the writers' times. We can learn from those who went before us.
James Martin
#87. A person could be immensely happy reading only him or the writers he loved. But that would be too easy.
Roberto Bolano
#88. Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is.
Jose Saramago
#89. The writers we tend to universally admire, like Beckett, or Kafka, or TS Eliot, are not very prolific.
John Updike
#90. There are professional negotiators working for the writers and the actors, but basically you've got the writers and actors negotiating against businessmen. That's why you get rhetoric.
Dick Wolf
#91. The writers and producers always have an idea, then they cast the role and the instrument starts to tell them how to play the music.
Rene Auberjonois
#92. Before you approach a production entity or even a potential producer, you should write up a treatment and register your show with the Writers Guild of America.
Penelope Spheeris
#93. Once outside the magic circle the writers became their lonely selves, pondering on poems, observing their fellow men ruthlessly, putting people they knew into novels; no wonder they were without friends.
Barbara Pym
#94. I know that the writers I read and admire all have an influence on my work, but trying to determine to what degree any particular piece of input changes the way I think about writing seems counterproductive.
Kevin Powers
#95. The writers are very good about misdirection and changeups, and that's what's great about it. We always think we know what's going to happen and then they throw a curveball that you don't see coming.
Mike Colter
#96. If you like comedy, go home and curl up with Leviticus. The writers of The Onion are handed Leviticus on their first day.
Nick Offerman
#97. The crew, the actors and the writers all work the same way. We always want to do the best job.
Robert Knepper
#98. All afternoon, I read. I fall asleep once as well, no disrespect to the writers.
Markus Zusak
#99. As a past president of the Writers Guild, I think women shouldn't write for free. Maybe you have to do it for a time, to make a reputation, but I think the idea of giving your work away is the beginning of authors not being able to make a living.
Erica Jong
#100. I have always been a HUGE Star Wars fan since I was like 5 years old. Most of us in the writers room at Family Guy were big nerds growing up and could recite almost any scene from Star Wars.
Alex Borstein
