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Video: A screenwriting ghostwriter has an ethics problem.

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

Anton Chekhov

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

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

Roald Dahl

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

Matthew Arnold

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

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

It’s an accepted fact that all writers are crazy; even the normal ones are weird.

William Goldman

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.

Orson Scott Card

Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.

M. K. Simmons

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

E. B. White

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

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round.

Sherman Reilly Duffy

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

Edward Albee

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.

Will Rogers

What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.

Jeanette Walls

If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.

Sloan Wilson

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.