The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in; becoming narcissistic.
I don’t enjoy any of the process of writing. I enjoy it when it goes on if it zings and it has great warmth and import and it’s successful.
I guess we all have a little vaunting itch for immortality, I guess that must be it.
I don’t know what my friends do. Generally they become producers. That way they can stop writing!
In terms of screenwriting adaptations it’s trying to cut out stuff that’s extraneous, without doing damage to the original piece, because you owe a debt of some respect to the original author. That’s why it was bought.
I’m sufficiently independent to know that I can live well and comfortably all the rest of my life whether I’m rejected or not.
I found that it was all right to have Martians saying things Democrats and Republicans could never say.
Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science Fiction is the improbable made possible.
I just want people to remember me a hundred years from now. I don’t care that they’re not able to quote any single line that I’ve written. But just that they can say, “Oh, he was a writer.” That’s sufficiently an honored position for me.
It has forever been thus: So long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedoms – all of them – may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth, an article of faith, an act of courage.
There are weapons that are simply thoughts. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy.
There are a lot I’m proud of, and a lot I wish the hell I’d never written.
You see. No shock. No engulfment. No tearing assunder. What you feared would come like an explosion is like a whisper. What you thought was the end is the beginning.
Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.
I’m frequently surprised, sometimes bugged off, and sometimes happy, depending on the actor. It’s a fact of life that just as often as not an actor can breathe life into a line as he can destroy it by misinterpretation, and I’ve been blessed frequently by having good actors.
Ideas are born from what is smelled, heard, seen, experienced, felt, emotionalized.
Writing is a demanding profession and a selfish one. And because it is selfish and demanding, because it is compulsive and exacting, I didn’t embrace it. I succumbed to it.
I think the essence of the argument has always been, first of all, the Guild doesn’t want writing on spec. And that’s been a major problem over the years. But obviously, to the young writer that’s unfair and it’s discriminatory, and it can be very hurtful to one’s career.
There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition.
You unlock the door with the key of imagination.