Socialist writers are made of sterner stuff than those who only let their characters steeplechase through trouble in order to comeout first in the happy ending of moral uplift.
We [fiction writers] are much more of a maze than we are a motorway. Things are always in flux, they're always in movement, they're always twisting back on each other. I think the straight line is such a lie.
I've worked with a lot of different producers, a lot of different writers on the album, so I mostly feel like I learned a lot about what I don't want to do the next time around.
I'm sure there are writers who are great businessmen, but I never met any.
Yeah, I think it's like any God-given gift. You writers have the gift of perception. If you don't use it, you're going to lose it. And it's the same thing with you [Lorraine], it's God-given.
Usually people who do bad things make good writers. I did a lot of bad things, which is why my novels are interesting.
As writers, the world is not about individual expression entirely because we are producing works of literature and getting them out into the world.
There are very few instances where writers have also been effective image makers - different skill sets are required.
I don't think they [contemporary writers] read me either. I mean, if we're concerned genuinely with writing, I think we probably get on with our work.
The climate stubbornly refuses to co-operate with computer models and the writers of alarmist popular articles and books.
Among the writers of all ages, some deserve fame, and have it; others neither have nor deserve it; some have it, not deserving it; others, though deserving it, yet totally miss it, or have it not equal to their deserts.
I caution writers all the time to slow down and pay more attention to the work in front of them than to the end result. I don't think you write one book and get anywhere. I think you write five books and then maybe you are finally on the right path.
What I take from writers I like is their economy - the ability to use language to very effective ends. The ability to have somebody read something and see it, or for somebody to paint an entire landscape of visual imagery with just sheets of words - that's magical.
My grandfather had been a newspaper reporter, as was my uncle. They were pretty good writers and so I thought maybe somewhere down the line I would do some writing.
World War II is the greatest drama in human history, the biggest war ever and a true battle of good and evil. I imagine writers will continue to get stories from it, and readers will continue to love them, for many more years.
There's a certain possessiveness of writers sometimes.
As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.
I've told the same story twelve different ways, but I think that's just part of what writers do. Once may not be enough.
Salter is a writer who particularly rewards those for whom reading is an intense pleasure. He is among the very few North American writers all of whose work I want to read, whose as-yet-unpublished books I wait for impatiently.
Writers don't retire. I will always be a writer.