Writing Profession Quotes

My only problem with fans is when they turn pro. For example, when all the professional writers were fired by DC in the '60s, they brought in a generation of comic book fans who would have paid to have written these stories.

I come from a family of writers. My mom had been a writer, nonfiction books, and her mother was a playwright in the 1930s and '40s. And my twin brother, Alexi, is a writer on 'The Following.'

I used to roof hay barns for my father. It's dangerous work. Writing is much better.

It was weird - writing is a stupid thing to do. I come up here in the morning to a pleasant room in the roof of my house and imagine I'm a black South American football superstar; then I have to imagine I'm a female pop celebrity who's pregnant. It's a completely mad way to spend your time.

As a past president of the Writers Guild, I think women shouldn't write for free. Maybe you have to do it for a time, to make a reputation, but I think the idea of giving your work away is the beginning of authors not being able to make a living.

In terms of the economics, yes obviously the rise of e-books and how people choose to read books has a big effect on the economics of the game. But whether people are buying them on paper or downloading them there's still some poor wretch in a room who is trying to write a poem, write a story, write a novel. And so my job doesn't change. It's just how people receive it and economic conditions on the ground change, but that doesn't affect what I write.

I've never thought of myself as a writer. I still don't, despite all the writing I've done.

It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.

I knew I wanted to be a writer at 13. Before that, I told everyone I was going to be an artist.

All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.

I'm a writer. I could not or would not ever run a business. I don't even have a secretary. And contrary to some of the stereotypes, entrepreneurs are not loners. I am.

If you are a writer, Saturday and Sunday don't mean anything.

Advertising was fairly simple work, and I really just wanted a job where I could sit and write every day and not get fired for it like I had at other jobs, but it was fun.

Being a journalist is good if you want to write books: it teaches you to get beyond the blank screen. My books have been described as froth, but there's scope to be witty and ironic about everything in life.

I wrote newspaper articles professionally for seven years, and I love newspapers.

I don't know of any American playwrights who earn the bulk of their living writing plays. Many of the older ones teach, while a growing number of younger ones write for series television.

I wrote for a weekly magazine and then edited a literary magazine, but I did not really feel comfortable with the profession of journalism itself.

I definitely think of myself still as a writer first, and feel like - with the lucky exception of this - any acting opportunity I've gotten is usually because I was writing on it. This is like a wonderful vacation. If you've ever sat in a writers' room it's the most disgusting, tortuous place, so it's a treat to be treated like a movie actor.

Writers are nothing but beggars with a good line.

I knew I wanted to be a writer before I knew that being a writer was possible.

A writer is a maker, not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but himself, his family and his friends.

My aunt could never understand how writing could be a full-time job. She'd keep asking when I'd get a real job!

Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.

There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all by themselves. Of course it's why you want to become a writer — because you have the liberty to do that, but once you have the liberty you also have the obligation to do it.

[Writers are] the highest paid secretaries in the world.