Writer's Inspiration Quotes

I think any writer keeps going back to some basic theme. Sometimes it's autobiographical. I guess it usually is.

I used to live with J.D. Souther, and I would watch him write. He's be sitting, he'd say something, and then he'd write it down. That's craft.

The modern writer who has influenced me most is W. Somerset Maugham .

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

The funny thing is, though I write mysteries, it is the one genre in adult fiction I never read. I read Nancy Drew, of course, when I was a kid, but I think the real appeal is as a writer because I'm drawn to puzzly, complicated plots.

Whatever's going on with me at the time of writing is going to find its way into the piece. If that doesn't happen, then what the hell am I doing? So if I'm writing 'Inglourious Basterds,' and I'm in love with a girl and we break up, that's going to find its way into the piece.

Every writer is going to end up drawing from their own experiences in one way or another.

When I'm talking to someone I think 'can I use this dialogue in a book,'" said Luis. "If the answer is no I try talking to someone else.

Every writer needs new material now and then, whether it's traveling to Japan, volunteering at a food bank, learning a new language, or trying a new food.

Writers are always writing about infidelity. It's so dramatic. The wickedness of it, the secrecy, the complications, the finding that you thought you were one person but you're also this other person. The innocent life and the guilty life. My God, it's just full of stuff for a writer. I doubt it will ever go out of fashion.

When I'm writing, I try to have the mask of my character on as I'm walking through the world. When I'm not at my desk, the rest of the time, I try to stay in that character and see the world the way that character would It's almost like method acting in a way — keeping the character close the way the actor keeps a script close and always tries to be in character.

The final lesson a writer learns is that everything can nourish the writer. The dictionary, a new word, a voyage, an encounter, a talk on the street, a book, a phrase learned.

I write about the things that haunt or obsess me.

I think my grandmother Woodrell was most responsible for my becoming a writer. She wasn't quite literate, but was very proud that she attended school as far as the third grade. She worked as a maid, housekeeper and cook.

I think every writer has a book that haunts them, and on some level, every book you write is a reaction to it. 'Lolita' is that book for me. Nabokov's love of wordplay, descriptive detail, artfully complex plots, and his themes of obsession and lost love, are inspiring.

A whole generation of writers dined out on the dialectic between original cultures and their culture by "progress.

Most writers are drawn to what is unknown, rather than what is clear in any tale.

Some people read an interesting or provocative newspaper article, and that's the end of that. A writer reads such an article, and her imagination gets fired up. Questions occur to her. She might feel an urge to finish the story that the article suggests.

The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write.

Growing up with country, R&B, gospel, and classical music from my grandmother and pop, Tuskegee was the perfect melting pot for my influences as a writer.

I am what I am as a writer because of Norman Lear and Spike Lee. Norman Lear in particular.

I'm real bent on dialogue. I'm just a little bit crazy and when you put that along with 20 years as a criminal lawyer, it's pretty easy to come up with some interesting plots.

I should think just about every young writer - which I was at the time - would be influenced by HPL. As an American writer of weird fiction, he was at the top of the class.

As a writer, you rely on whatever makes you up as a person, whether those things are twisted and nasty or otherwise.

When you begin a play, you're going to have to spend a lot of time with those characters, so those characters are going to have to be rich enough that you want to take a very long journey with them. That's how I begin thinking about what I want to write about and who I want to write about.