Pramoedya Ananta Toer Quotes

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.

I'm not sure there's a difference between books that affected the way I see the world and books that influenced me as a writer.

If you're mostly a writer - if your point of departure is writing something - which for a writer/director is sort of where you start, you're really influenced by the writers you love one way or another.

I have always loved short stories. I have been at least as influenced by the short story masters as I have been by novelists.

My heroes were never scientists. They were Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood, you know, good writers.

I'm not one of those authors who claims to hear voices in my head or 'let the characters speak through me,' whatever that might mean.

Everything that you read is an influence on everything you write, and you want to draw as many elements into your work as you can.

No writer … has any life in the absence of people who need what he writes

I think watching TV has influenced my books, but I don't think writing TV has.

Every artist wants an audience, and it's incredible to me how books take on a life of their own and reach people whom you could never meet. That's what got me interested in writing in the first place.

I don't really base any of my characters on specific people that I know, although my characters are informed by the kind of people who live in my community.

I've learned as much about writing from songwriters as I have from other writers.

The success of 'Those Who Save Us' had an interesting effect on the writing of 'The Stormchasers.'

One of the first things that helped me to understand certain things about writing was seeing 'The Iceman Cometh' in the Village when I was a kid, before I ever became a newspaperman, and realizing that the world I knew could also be the subject of some amazing stuff.

I learned so much from the writing on 'King of the Hill', which I thought was just magnificent. They would let real moments happen in this animated, one-dimensional world. I feel like I've been in school this whole time.

The book that first made me want to be a writer is Flannery O'Connor's short story collection 'A Good Man Is Hard To Find.'

It's only when you're privy to the conversations and a member of the production team that you can direct the course of a series and make sure it flourishes.

When I was writing 'House Of Suns,' there were a few writers I had in mind as role models, the main being Gene Wolfe.

This adoration of an artist as a lone genius is quite misled, I think, because they are very much part of their time and their community.

Just as I could tell you about my first Andre Norton novel or my first L'Engle or my first Asimov, I could write a paragraph about how each of these writers influenced me, my writing, and my thoughts, and do to this day.

I became a writer out of the desire to express myself.

I think I'm influenced a lot by Drake in specific ways in my writing.

I can't write unless I've got the voice for a character.

Ann and I were the main writers in Heart. We had the leadership role, and the guys in the band sometimes had a hard time with that.

When a director is also a writer, everyone on the production looks to him, knowing he gave birth to the idea. There's a different level of viability.