Top 100 Well Written Quotes
#1. I am no fan of books. And chances are, if you're reading this, you and I share a healthy skepticism about the printed word. Well, I want you to know that this is the first book I've ever written, and I hope it's the first book you've ever read. Don't make a habit of it.
Stephen Colbert
#2. Most books reviews aren't very well-written. They tend to be more about the reviewer than the book.
Tibor Fischer
#3. After 'Nikki' and 'Steve Harvey,' I had written on a show called 'The Oblongs,' which was pretty well respected and had a lot of 'Simpsons' writers on it. So I was a TV writer with an interesting voice at that moment.
Jill Soloway
#4. Only those works which are well-written will pass to posterity: the amount of knowledge, the uniqueness of the facts, even the novelty of the discoveries are no guarantees of immortality ... These things are exterior to a man but style is the man himself.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
#5. The screenplay is so well-written in a scruffy, fanzine way that you want to rub noses in it - the noses of those zombie writers who take 'screenwriting' classes that teach them the formulas for 'hit films.'
Roger Ebert
#6. Oftentimes what happens is that the writer understands one character, but they don't understand the other one, and the other one ends up not being written as well.
Jennifer Beals
#7. I use improvisation as a writing tool to help produce material that goes into a script, but a well-crafted script shouldn't sound scripted, and oftentimes people confuse something that looks like improvisation for what is actually a very well-written script that is well-acted.
Steve Coogan
#8. I don't know if kids still read it, I just know that for me - as a boarding school kid - the book had a lot of resonance. It was a well written book. I was honored to play a part in that movie version.
Parker Stevenson
#9. There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom is either rhymed or in some way musically measured,
is, in form as well as substance, poetry; and a volume which should contain the condensed wisdom of mankind need not have one rhythmless line.
Henry David Thoreau
#10. I think the tradition of well-written history hasn't been squashed out of the academic world as much in Britain as it has in the United States.
Adam Hochschild
#11. I'll save you some time...if I didn't rate all my books asa 5 stars, I bloody well wouldn't have written them!!
John W. Cassell
#13. Much has been written about what makes families work. The consensus is that families that support the emotional well-being and growth of their members combine two almost opposite traits. They combine discipline with spontaneity, rules with freedom, high expectations with unstinting love.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#14. I love working that way, and that's sort of the way that Mark, Jay, and I have been working for years, where we start with scripts that are really solid and well-written. But once we get into the scene and we start doing the work, we definitely loosen things up.
Steve Zissis
#15. What good is all the painstaking work on copy if the headline isn't right? If the headline doesn't stop people, the copy might as well be written in Greek.
John Caples
#16. Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more months might as well have been written by someone else.
Mickey W. Mantle
#17. I find stuff written about me is in stark contrast to who I am. But I can sleep well at night knowing that I did my best - I'm looking forward to my next chapter, whatever that is.
Peta Credlin
#18. There's still a place for someone to come up with a strong headline, some copy in a commercial that's well written. I'm not saying it was better in the old days; it's just a totally different way of communicating.
Jerry Della Femina
#19. You'll see that the strong, the affirmative, the positive voice in any of the plays I've written is that of a woman. My men are, well, not quite worthless, but they are certainly weak, and that reflects the reality I grew up with and what I think has in a sense shaped me.
Athol Fugard
#20. Well, the very best operas are the ones written by the very best composers.
John Eaton
#21. History is full of lady engineers and spies and scientists. But history is also written by the victorious, and it may not surprise you that thus far the overwhelming winners have been straight white dudes. That hasn't worked out so well for everyone else.
Sam Maggs
#22. I wish to make my fortune with you.' 'Well, you can forget about that, for a start,' said Francis Crawford. 'And if your place in Paradise has been written, then for God's sake hang on to it. Because we're going in the opposite direction.
Dorothy Dunnett
#23. Of the small number of things which I have liked and done well, drinking is by far the thing I have done best. Although I have read a lot, I have drunk more. I have written much less than most people who write; but I have drunk more than the majority of the people who drink.
Guy Debord
#24. I'd been assured, at age 21 or so, by a well-known editor who saw the first part of The Secret History in what was basically its final form, that it would never be published because "no woman has ever written a successful novel from a male point of view."
Donna Tartt
#25. I wish I could have a recurring role on 'Modern Family'. I think 'Modern Family' is the best comedy on television. It's extremely well written, extremely well acted and directed.
Patti LuPone
#26. Designing well-written tests still remains a challenging task. Some complex questions may lose clarity causing difficulties in providing meaningful answers. Basically, questions should be designed in such a way that each well-prepared student can easily give a correct answer.
Eraldo Banovac
#27. A script arrived, and on the front cover - scrawled really big, as if it were a book report - is 'Django Unchained, written by Quentin Tarantino.' And I thought, 'Well, no art department came up with this; this is Quentin's writing.'
Dennis Christopher
#28. When you say the name Gilligan, you know who that is. If a show is good, if it's written well, you should be able to erase the names of the characters saying the lines and still be able to know who said it. If you can't do that, the show will fail.
Sherwood Schwartz
#29. Well it was sent to me, well because almost everything that is written in Baltimore is sent to me. And David Simon, who was a writer for the Baltimore Sun, spent one year following the homicide squad in Baltimore and he chronicled that period of time.
Barry Levinson
#30. Resume: a written exaggeration of only the good things a person has done in the past, as well as a wish list of the qualities a person would like to have.
Bo Bennett
#31. Those who write against vanity want the glory of having written well, and their readers the glory of reading well, and I who write this have the same desire, as perhaps those who read this have also.
Blaise Pascal
#32. Poetry must be as well written as prose.
Ezra Pound
#33. 'Family Secrets' is thought provoking, well written, and remorselessly intelligent.
Jane Ridley
#34. It's as much a writer's concern, who is responsible to his readers for all the books written before him as well as those which will be written after him.
Ilya Ehrenburg
#35. Well, usually, when you're doing a sitcom, you get a script and every word or for the most part, is written. So, you know, if it's a 30-minute sitcom, then it's a 35-page script or something like that.
Cheryl Hines
#36. Only well-written works will descend to posterity. Fulness of knowledge, interesting facts, even useful inventions, are no pledge of immortality, for they may be employed by more skilful hands; they are outside the man; the style is the man himself.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
#37. Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don't yet understand the characters well enough to write in their voices.
[Ten rules for writing fiction (The Guardian, 20 February 2010)]
Helen Dunmore
#38. If it's well written and well directed and you've got good actors to work with, acting is easy. But making sure all the ducks are in a row is the hard part. It's very rare.
John Lithgow
#39. Every work of science great enough to be well remembered for a few generations affords some exemplification of the defective state of the art of reasoning of the time when it was written; and each chief step in science has been a lesson in logic.
Charles Sanders Peirce
#40. Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter.
Karen Joy Fowler
#41. As I walked beside Ren, I couldn't help but notice he got a lot of attention. Women of all ages checked him out. So did a lot of men. He had that angelic face but was rocking a grin that had bad written all over it. I was beginning to hate that grin, because ... well, because of reasons.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
#42. Any person that don't read at least one well-written country newspaper is not truly informed.
Will Rogers
#43. I like going after good material, well-written material.
Sam Underwood
#44. When you people have a set up joke and the joke is set up straight and the words are just well written, I always say "C'mon, humans don't speak that way."
Will Gluck
#45. Shirley Valentine is a beautiful character and so well written. What Shirley speaks and thinks is so logical.
Loretta Swit
#46. I'm often dismayed by the sludge I see appearing on my screen if I approach writing as a task--the day's work--and not with some enjoyment.
William Zinsser
#47. as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. The nineteenth century
Oscar Wilde
#48. Sir Francis Bacon observed that a well-written book, compared with its rivals and antagonists, is like Moses' serpent, that immediately swallowed up and devoured those of the Egyptians.
Joseph Addison
#49. As you may have heard, the U.S. is putting together a constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? Think about it - it was written by very smart people, it's served us well for over two hundred years, and besides, we're not using it anymore.
Jay Leno
#50. If I were to die thinking that I'd written three poems that people might read after me, I would feel that I hadn't lived in vain. Great poets might expect the whole body of their work, but most of us - well, I would settle for a handful.
Andrew Motion
#51. I think the goal is to make a well written scene seem like it's improvised and/or to come up with things that you find in the room that you couldn't have known until you get into the real situation, just try to improve things as you go along.
Robert Downey Jr.
#52. My dear," she had said to Mamma, "I could not bring myself to give the child anything that was not well written,
Marcel Proust
#53. She found that books, the well-written ones, had the power to transport her from a world that was sometimes overstressed and over stimulating to a wholly new place of the author's imaginations.
J.N. LaVelle
#54. It is written that he who governs well, leads the blind; But that he who teaches, gives them eyes.
David O. McKay
#55. Norman Cherry wrote on Twitter:
'Recently finished reading War on Wheels: a wonderful account of the people and systems necessary to fight a successful war. I really enjoyed reading it. Thoroughly researched, well written, very accessible and suitable for specialist or general reader.
Philip Hamlyn Williams
#56. ...it is very well worth while to be tormented for two or three years of one's life, for the sake of being able to read all the rest of it. Consider - if reading had not been taught, Mrs. Radcliffe would have written in vain - or perhaps might not have written at all.
Jane Austen
#57. I think you have to be in an insane stratosphere in terms of fame in order to get offered really well-written scripts. Amanda Peet is definitely not in that group.
Amanda Peet
#58. You will have written exceptionally well if, by skilful arrangement of your words, you have made an ordinary one seem original.
Horace
#59. All of you favorite books wouldn't seem so well written if you were just a little bit more well read.
Craig Finn
#60. In this book, much is metaphorical, not as it seems. It's written for writing's sake, as if I were to say, "Let me tell you I'm dying." Well of course I am. So are you.
Chila Woychik
#61. How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.
Ernest Hemingway,
#62. Well I've written four beauty books as well.
Joan Collins
#63. You see a lot of good ideas or well-written scripts that are bad ideas.
John McTiernan
#64. Only sing - don't do cheap songs, don't do silly songs, just do, just do wonderful songs that are well-written.
Frank Sinatra
#65. I don't think you can write - at least not well - if you don't love stories, love the written word.
Nora Roberts
#66. Big flashy things have my name written all over them. Well ... not yet, give me time and a crayon.
Matt Smith
#67. He's a sculpture. Painstakingly chiseled into perfection over the course of years, until arias could be written about his eyebrows, his cheekbones, the freaking shape of his nostrils. And me? Well, I'm probably a finger-painting. Done by a three-year-old. Without supervision.
Julie Johnson
#68. Close counts in handguns as well, in my book," Remy argued.
"Your book is written in purple crayon. No one cares.
Abigail Roux
#69. What were her abilities? She played the pianoforte passably well even though it didn't interest her. She loved to read and could spend the rest of her life in a library. She'd written a book, and her imagination was such that she could transport herself from the wilds of Scotland to anywhere.
Karen Ranney
#70. When I write a page that reads badly I know that it is myself who has written it. When it reads well it has come through from somewhere else.
Gerald Brenan
#71. The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race.
William Zinsser
#72. We have a lot of long narrative poems written in the 20th century, but they're not very well known, and they're not read by very many people.
Robert Morgan
#74. I improvise whenever I feel it's important, or whenever I think that something's there. It's nice to have a script that's so well-written that I don't have to improvise. I mean, I used to have to re-write whole movies; this is kind of nice.
Bill Murray
#75. The thing is, 'Discworld' had been going on for a very long time, and I've written children's books as well. Usually when people have a really big series they franchise it, which I thought is a bit of a no-no, so I thought what I'd do is I'd franchise it to myself.
Terry Pratchett
#76. Next to the first Henry and Meg, Henry had written, "Promise?"
Well, that genie's out of the bottle and there's no stuffing her back in.
Laura Anderson Kurk
#77. I would love to be friends with Kendrick Lamar because I am just a huge fan of his music, I think he is so cool and he uses so many interesting sounds and has such good melodies and is just a beautiful rapper, his raps are just so well-written and his tracks are so insane, I am obsessed with him.
Alana Haim
#78. Good English, well spoken and well written will open more doors than a college degree ... Bad English will slam doors you don't even know exist.
William Raspberry
#79. This experiment succeeds especially well, we think, if the letters written on the board form by their ensemble one single word.
Anonymous
#80. I feel like if a film is well-written, then the character's arc is complete. There really is very little room to expand on that afterwards.
Cary Elwes
#81. Good Omens was written by two people who at the time were not at all well known except by the people who already knew them. They weren't even certain it would sell.
Terry Pratchett
#82. And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life.
James Earl Jones
#83. For me it came from the material. It was so well written and brought the opportunity to work with great actors. And of course the opportunity to 'mince about' was an added element that I wanted to take advantage of!
Dwayne Johnson
#84. Don't annoy your readers by over-explaining--by telling them something they already know or can figure out. Try not to use words like "surprisingly," "predictably" and "of course," which put a value on a fact before the reader encounters the fact. Trust your material.
William Zinsser
#85. My own 'sentimental favorite' is always the novel I haven't yet written - I suppose that's the one I consider my 'masterpiece' as well.
Alice McDermott
#86. If you get a script and it's really well written, that's always exciting.
Amanda Abbington
#87. Well, there are three different processes of making a film, of course. They're sort of re-written three times. You write it to start with, and then you shoot it and you re-write it while shooting and you sort of re-write it as you edit.
Stephen Daldry
#88. Any alphabet book for children where 'P is for Patti' Smith and 'X is for the women whose names we don't know' is something I can recommend, especially when the book is as well written, representationa lly diverse and vividly illustrated as this one.
Francesca Lia Block
#89. But on the question of who you're writing for, don't be eager to please.
William Zinsser
#90. Great stories, well written and heartfelt. Prisoner of SouthernRock is an engaging and entertaining celebration of southern music, musicians and characters.
Chuck Leavell
#91. The very best impromptu speeches are the ones written well in advance.
Ruth Gordon
#92. Writing in a journal activates the narrator function of our minds. Studies have suggested that simply writing down our account of a challenging experience can lower physiological reactivity and increase our sense of well-being, even if we never show what we've written to anyone else.
Daniel J. Siegel
#93. Also, I had read a book called She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, written by a professor who had gone through transgender surgery, but it took this person well into his thirties to come to terms with the absolute necessity of having to do it.
Mercedes Ruehl
#94. Jeff Selingo is one of the most respected observers of American higher education ... Not all will agree with his observations, conclusions, predictions and recommendations, but all will gain from this thoughtful, well-written, provocative volume. I highly recommend it.
David J. Skorton
#95. The knowledge of your destiny is available to you, well before
it actually happens, as a message streaming continuously from
your heart to your brain, written in the language of longing.
Martha Beck
#96. If I like the story and it's well written, and it's a character I want to play and they'll pay me, then I decide to do it.
William H. Macy
#97. I've always written poetry but I didn't realise it was a therapy for me until I was maybe 15. That's when my singing started to come together as well because I was listening to so much jazz. What I love I will always embrace.
Amy Winehouse
#98. This is why Sonja Lyubomirsky, a leader in the scientific study of well-being, has written that she prefers the phrase "creation or construction of happiness" to the more popular "pursuit," since "research shows that it's in our power to fashion it for ourselves."13
Shawn Achor
#99. I know it's boring to say this but I always start with the script. I mean if it's well written and it's a character that I haven't necessarily played before.
Billy Bob Thornton
#100. Just why I sent it to the publishers would be hard to say, but when I had finished it I felt that it was literature, because it is real and because it was well written. And I know that the world wants such things.
Mary MacLane
