Ashwin Sanghi Quotes

I always wanted to be the underdog. For me, as a portrait photographer, it's the kiss of death to become well known. I did my best work when no one knew who I was. People weren't threatened by me because they didn't think I was a big deal.

I don't think I ever got the hang of the writers' room. I love collaborating with people, but I really do my best work alone, and I think I would want to - if I did something again, I think I'd want to take total ownership the way Aaron Sorkin or David Kelley does.

From the moment I wrote 'Leaf Storm' I realized I wanted to be a writer and that nobody could stop me and that the only thing left for me to do was to try to be the best writer in the world.

I honestly think I could sit down and write a show tonight that the critics would love, and I know it would be canceled within four weeks. I know what the critics love. We write and produce for people, not for critics.

If you do television, and it's great, it's the best job there is. Every week it's another opportunity to really make that work and figure out how to make it work better. I love that it's like theater too, and the audience, and it's so short, like twenty minutes... It's like a Haiku or something.

I love writing books - I really do. If I could just quit everything and work on a book every day, I would love that most.

I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows.

The important thing is to do what you most love in the best way. If you love literature, you could be a great writer and perhaps one day become a Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature.

And write what you love - don't feel pressured to write serious prose if what you like is to be funny.

The pieces I've written for 'Outside' magazine are definitely my best work, and they're virtually all about the outdoors.

I think the most important lesson isn't necessarily to try and write a different book every time, or to try and brand yourself and write one specific kind of book, but to write the kind of books you love to read.

I love to write. It's my first love.

Seriously, you know - I love to write. I enjoy the process; I enjoy the different processes, because writing for film and television and graphic novels is all very different. So I've never had the feeling of, 'Oh, you have to do this one thing.'

I've always been inspired by Genet, Henry Miller and Hubert Selby, Jr., who taught me that you've got to tell a bigger truth in whatever you're doing, but the truth is not popular.

You do small movies because the script is good and because you believe in the director. You don't care about the money. And when they disappear, it's a pity.

I'm a huge Muppets fan. Gigantic. I think they're genius. I think they're some of the best work out there and completely underrated, just because of how genius they are. I love that kind of humor. It's so innocent but brilliant.

The best novel I wrote was one called 'Crusoe's Daughter,' which never won any prizes. But I was getting somewhere in that. I'm not sure I have in any of the others.

Long before I fell in love with writing, I fell in love with reading. Sometimes, honestly, I feel like I'm cheating on my first love when I settle into my office chair to start work on the latest manuscript.

'All Our Yesterdays' was unquestionably the best work I have ever done. And the reading public stayed away in droves.

The effort to create a work of art that is true and potentially lasting, that is the very best work of art you can create at that point in your life - a book that may only reach or move a few people but will seem to those people somehow transformative. That's the ideal; that's always the motivation.

When we were making 'Arrested Development,' it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. You know, nobody was watching. We weren't getting feedback. The job wasn't paying very well. But the one thing I did feel confident about was: No one will ever be able to do this again. Because no one would be stupid enough to try.

I think you can spread yourself across any number of genres when you're a writer as long as you have a deep, abiding love for each of them.

Most of all, I love being a storyteller. And yes, I want to make a good living, but I'm not always driven by the best commercial sense.

Sure, best seller. I'd love to knock Stephen King off the top of the list. I know I won't, but, after all, I spend my life inventing a different reality.

I'd pretty much given up hope of being published, so I just wrote the book I wanted to read.