Writer's Intention Quotes

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.

I had always wanted to be a writer who confused genre boundaries and who was read in multiple contexts.

It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.

I have intentions as a writer, but people - when they're listening to a track - will take from it what they interpret.

The reason I'm a writer is to understand other people and myself more. The reason I'm a writer is to dramatize stories about human beings so that it improves my life. So that's a very selfish thing.

But you cannot expect every writer to dwell on human suffering. I think my books do deal with grave issues. People who say they are too positive probably haven't read them.

As a writer I want everybody to get a chance to voice their opinions. If each character thinks that they're telling the truth, then it's valid. Then at the end of the film, I leave it up to the audience to decide who did the right thing.

When I wrote 'Savage Season,' it was three years later before I wrote the second Hap and Leonard novel. Whenever I wrote one, I never intended to write the next one.

I don't want to indulge myself in the luxury of writing beautiful paragraphs just for the sake of making beautiful writing. That doesn't interest me. I want everything to be essential.

The question of likability is a bit of a puzzler for me. You know, I don't write people with likability in mind. It's more whether or not I find them compelling.

If a reader comes across a story that makes them cry, you can be sure that the writer felt every single thing that makes the reader cry.

Nothing makes me happier than to have a smart person tell me why the show is smart, especially if I didn't intend that. I tend to be a very instinctual writer, and I don't plot shows out like, "This is my thesis and this is how I'm going to subtly sneak my thesis into this episode." I just approach it from, "We know these characters well, here are the situations that they're in, now how would they behave? What would the consequences be?" And it's always fun to see how people interpret that and dissect it afterward, and make me and the other writers seem probably smarter than we really are.

I'm in love with the way that Ella Fitzgerald delivered a lyric. She would deliver a lyric with the kind of clarity that would make you wonder why it was written, and make you think about the writer. I think every writer hopes an Ella of any genre or anytime gets a hold of their work and works the song like that.

I don't write women who are weak or simpering.

Nobody sits down and says, 'Well, I'm going to write a bad book.' They sit down to write a great book, but it doesn't always turn out like that. The writer may do his best and still write a so-so book, and other times, it just flows easily. But I don't know how you can control that.

I wanted to look like the most diverse writer in comics! Spy genre, space genre, crime genre, and then you realize that it's all actually the same thing.

Sometimes I write quickly, sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!

I am never going to write for the sake of writing.

I like it when I can hear directly from the writer: what they're seeing, what they're envisioning, and what their intention is.

When I write something, every word of it is meant. I can't say it enough.

The thing is, emotion - if it's visibly felt by the writer - will go through all the processes it takes to publish a story and still hit the reader right in the gut. But you have to really mean it.

I don't think any writer chooses what his or her work is called.

But I do not have the reader in mind when I write. No true writer does that.

I try my best to not just avoid cliches but to write with some meaning.