Video: Why stories matter – 80 years of perspective

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Stories outlive us. How will anyone know your story if you don't write it down? That's a good reason to consider hiring a professional ghostwriter.

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

William Faulkner

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Truman Capote Quote

It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.

Bob Dylan

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.

William C. Gault

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Tom Clancy

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

Roald Dahl

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.

Douglas Adams

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Oscar Wilde

Don’t annoy an author, you’ll end up in their book and you won’t look good.

Lawrence Wray

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

Harlan Ellison

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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.

Quentin Tarantino

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.