David Duchovny Quotes

I say to my pupils, 'You can pitch me any thing you've got, but tell me why you're the only person who can write it in the world. Keep digging.'

Readers would email me and say, 'Please write a novel about so-and-so,' but it has to come from yourself and not so much from your readership.

When I lead essay workshops, I ask students to come up with at least five topics, which they'll narrow down to one. The winning idea should be the story the student is most excited to tell because it honestly reflects his or her best self.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what's really happening to me, even if it's a tough pill to swallow for people around me... I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

I never learned to be a writer. I never took screenwriting courses. I never read anyone's scripts. As a writer, my only guiding principle has been to write about things that scare me, write about things that make me feel vulnerable, write about things that will expose my deepest fears, so that's how I write.

Just write what comes to you.

What I see, what I went through, what a friend of mine may have went through, whatever - I rap about it.

To get a game show into production is as challenging and as intellectually demanding as it is to write a novel or screenplay.

Most writers write from their own experiences. That is where the honesty and intensity of emotions come from.

I think it's easier for me to write from experience.

For some, the fear of coming out is so great, they can continue to live an inauthentic life. But at a certain point, the pain becomes too much to bear. For me, having one more day pass by where I wasn't living my true self seemed like such a wasted opportunity, such a wasted life.

You can only write your own vision.

Everybody - every single person - has a story. Find yours and tell it in your voice.

For myself, I feel more natural writing stories or novels than writing plays. I feel more like myself, like I can express myself better, and like I have a greater clarity about what I want to do.

My goal is, no matter what genre or story, I'll find a personal angle. It doesn't have to be autobiographical, or specifically Asian-American. It has to explore a burning question that I have.

I'm always thinking about stories and ideas, and I have a few I'd like to actively pursue, but as much as I love them, I love the process of creation, and I want to go on and create things for myself, and create new things.

If I was at school and one of my friends said something funny, I'd write it down in a notebook and take it to the writers meetings. I never told my friends about it. I just thought I could incorporate stuff that was true to life.

There are stories I wanted to tell, and they are not defined by what I look like.

A baby writer should take inspiration from her predecessors but also find ways to tell her own stories in her own way.

I'm certainly no Bruce Springsteen in terms of being a storyteller, but I'm trying to get a better handle on it and not always go after it from an autobiographical standpoint.

You do your best to tell your own story, in the most specific way, and then you hope that that travels well, when it's done with heart and honesty.

When you're trying to force things in a script, it seems like it's getting somewhere, but it isn't real or interesting. All the bad material you've written becomes an albatross around your neck. So I really don't like writing a lot of bad stuff, I prefer to just keep narrowing it down to stuff I think is solid.

I feel like I try to write from an honest of a place as I can - without scaring people off too much, I guess.

I'm not a gifted storyteller, so I write what I know and hope that honesty resonates with other people's experiences.

If we got writing assignments in English class to make up a story, that was when the glimmer of creativity popped out. That was way more interesting to me than writing down my life details.