I’m reconfiguring Ghostwriters Central. The first change was to bring Kate Jonez on board. She’s a marvelous writer, Read More...
What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.
A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.
Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.
In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.
No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.
If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.
Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

























