Pastoral Resources

Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists.

Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life.

Writing Part of the Scenery has been a very different experience. I have been reminded of people and events, real and imaginary which have been part of my life. This book is a celebration of the land which means so much to me.

When you're writing about people that are not very well off, you seem to see the kitchen sink. So it was a bit of a sort of cosy phrase that got used a bit too much.

Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free.

Most producers I've known were writers first, and writing is a vital part of any game show. You could easily argue that the writing is the key ingredient that makes 'Jeopardy!' so great.

Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.

Seem to be telling this, but really telling that. Three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of that. You could learn something from Nabokov on every page he ever wrote.

When I did start writing books, I didn't realize it, but the girls that grew up watching the show became moms.

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

Writing is hard work and bad for the health.

Then about 1951 I began writing again, painfully, a novel I called in the beginning A Life Sentence on Earth, but which developed into The Tree of Man.

Probably induced by the asthma, I started reading and writing early on, my literary efforts from the age of about nine running chiefly to poetry and plays.

I developed the habit of writing novels behind a closed door, or at my uncle's, on the dining table.

I continued writing the bad plays which fortunately nobody would produce, just as no one did me the unkindness of publishing my early novels.

We're the only branch of government that explains itself in writing every time it makes a decision.

Now I'm doing a film festival for kids and writing a script about a kidnapped journalist in Afghanistan.

Writing good ads is easy when you have something to say.