Lee Daniels Quotes

I was a housewife, so I learned to write in times off, and I don't think I ever gave it up, though there were times when I was very discouraged because I began to see that the stories I was writing were not very good, that I had a lot to learn, and that it was a much, much harder job than I had expected.

Mine is not a story to tell struggling writers.

Of course I planned to write the Great American Novel; that lasted about a week, at which point I decided I had nothing to say that could possibly qualify. So I wrote a romance instead.

One of the problems of writing is that anyone who commits themselves to that process has to believe that they're good.

I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. I have to work really hard at it to try and say the things I'm concerned with.

It is actually a lot harder to sit down and write from A to Z. But for me at least, it's the only way I can do it, at this point, with any moderate success.

I kept trying to write these books that were sort of outside of my realm, and I kept failing.

I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but then you write the version that you can write.

Everyone thinks when they start writing that they can't do it. I was lucky. My sister Delia was the most important person in terms of encouraging me.

I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.

Listen, I wrote 10 unsuccessful books before I broke through, so I'm looking all the time to keep my books fascinating. I want to write what people want to read, not push any message.

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.

I think writing is such a great talent, and if I was better, I would love to be a writer.

My idea of writing is of unflinching and continual effort, somehow trying to find the right words until you reach a point where you can make no further progress and you either have something or you don't.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

Finding the discipline, the motivation, the focus, the passion to sit down in front of a blank piece of paper or a blank computer screen every day and then to make it come alive with characters and with plot is incredibly exciting and at the same time terrifying and frustrating, and sometimes it comes easy and sometimes it comes really hard.

It is my desire to be a great writer. I know that I still have a mountain to climb to achieve that.

It's easier to come up with new stories than it is to finish the ones you already have. I think every author would feel that way.

Someday I would like to be the kind of writer who barrels through a draft, but I can't even seem to barrel through an interview like this, so I imagine I have a long way to go.

Many times, what people call 'writer's block' is the confusion that happens when a writer has a great idea, but their writing skill is not up to the task of putting that idea down on paper. I think that learning the craft of writing is critical.

There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.

Writing never comes easy. The difference between Page 2 and Page Nothing is the difference between life and death.

I know that I'm probably far more pedestrian and less talented than many who dreamed of becoming writers but couldn't see the road so easily.

When I ventured into writing at the age of 17, I wanted to be a good and successful writer. I just wanted to write good stuff - poems, prose, stories, essays, everything.

I have always aspired to be a writer, be it as an author or a screenwriter, whatever the medium.