Writer's Voice Quotes

I would encourage you as a screenwriter to trust your story and don't make notes for the actors or don't make notes for the reader.

An ear will never do you wrong, but I know writers who... most of the language they use is just extracted language from other languages they've read. I am a big-time reader, but I mix and match.

I write what I'm interested in.

Various political parties, even if they're in direct opposition with one another, still say they are the spokesperson for the people. The writer must speak his own words and not get mixed up with politics.

I think that if a writer doesn't use her voice, be it in her writing or online or in real life, then what is the point of having one?

I think the fact that I use salty words in my Bonhoeffer book would tip you off that I'm no prude, exactly.

A good script is like a work of art in itself. I've read hundreds of scripts, and good ones are very rare. If the writer has something to say, and a voice, and a plot that matches character, and an emotional trajectory that works, then I'd be an idiot to fool around with it. It's just that few scripts ever are like that.

Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums?

If you take my stuff apart, you'll find my choruses of repetitions are picked up almost verbatim from Kurt Vonnegut, and my distanced fracture quality is all from Amy Hempel, who's probably my favourite writer.

I'm a fan myself, so I try to write the kind of comics I want to read.

I could talk more directly in a nonfiction voice than I could in fiction.

I think there are some writers - like, if you read Kerouac, I think you probably need to take a little break before you sit down to the typewriter because he's the type of writer whose voice infects you.

I do think they [French] view my writing itself as exotic - though that's probably not the best term for it - to a small extent, mainly because I say things that most French writers would probably hesitate to say for fear of offending someone or upsetting public sensibilities. I don't think that answers the question, but I'm not much good at figuring readers out or I would probably be writing bestsellers.

What's lucky about my career in general is that I stumbled into what every writer most wants. Not repeating myself and doing strange things has become my trademark.

A writer will not keep quiet. He will express his opinion through writings.

What obsesses a writer starting out on a lifetime's work is the panic-stricken search for a voice of his own.

I say what's in my head, and I'm on honest ground. That is worth so much, and I think it does make my job, as a writer, easier. It makes it possible for me to give people stuff that they like.

Little by little, writers develop their own styles, each as unique as a fingerprint.

Novelists do not swing on the same pendulums as critics.

The voice of universe can be silenced but the voice of writers cannot be.

Hemingway sucks. If I set out to write that way, it would have been been hollow and lifeless because it wasn't me.

I am not a politics wonk. I like the idea of my writing reflecting more about who I am or other people.

I don't know what makes a writer's voice. It's dozens of things. There are people who write who don't have it. They're tone-deaf, even though they're very fluent. It's an ability, like anything else, being a doctor or a veterinarian, or a musician.

I listened to this interview once with Jerry Seinfeld that really influenced my comedy and all of my writing, which is that when you're starting out in comedy, it's the audience that tells you what's funny about you. And you need to listen to that and make a note of that.

When I started to be a writer, I was not going to run the risk of boring you.