Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm not too good when exposed to people
I love the camaraderie of a writers' room.
You bet your bindi that’s how big I want it.
This is Seattle. We're supposed to have superior taste.
Ruthless concern with story is what I learned in television.
Anything I write I ask myself: Is it true, is it entertaining?
I steer clear of any novel that gets billed as a 'meditation.'
My father was a screenwriter, and I kind of grew up in that world.
My summer reading suggestion: Pick a really famous, really long novel.
On Jan. 1, 2012, I resolved to not buy anything from Amazon for a year.
My strength as a TV writer was my total lack of interest in television.
I survived many a youth hostel bunk room reading Tolstoy by flashlight.
My day is not that fun-filled or that filled usually with complications.
If you're an artist and you're on Twitter, you are doomed to mediocrity.
An artist must create. If she doesn't, she will become a menace to society.
We need to preserve our neighborhoods, our small business, our local economy.
The sooner you learn it's on you to make life interesting, the better off you'll be.
Unfortunately Seattle is my muse, for the better or worse of Seattle - I'm not sure.
I attended TED in 2007 and 2008, the last two years the conference was held in Monterey.
I love epistolary novels and became wildly excited when the form presented itself to me.
I think thats the most important job of a novelist - to bring authority to their writing.
I think one of the good things about writing novels is that you always start from scratch.
I think that's the most important job of a novelist - to bring authority to their writing.
I guess that's what art is: Turning something painful into something people can relate to.
My first novel didn't sell well. It was really painful and humiliating and shocking to me.
In my high-minded and naive way, I believed the only books worth reading were the classics.
My favorite kind of book is a domestic drama that's grounded in reality yet slightly unhinged.
Even when I was writing 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette,' I started to appreciate Seattle's many charms.
I just feel like there's this illicit thrill in reading other people's mail and spying on their lives.
And dialogue, I'm good at it, and it's because it's the only thing you have to work with in TV writing.
Novels demand a certain complexity of narrative and scope, so it's necessary for the characters to change.
I want find a part of myself that I feel shame about, or that I feel really scared of exposing to the world.
'Where'd You Go, Bernadette' was surprisingly easy and fun to write because I was feeling such strong emotions.
When I'm creatively solving problems, I'm in my sweet spot, and nothing can take me out of that joyful present.
There's something uniquely exhilarating about puzzling together the truth at the hands of an unreliable narrator.
One of the main reasons I don't like leaving the house is because I might find myself face to face with a Canadian.
My talent isn't so much in traditional research as in finding really smart people and badgering them with questions.
The first stop on this crazy train is Kindergarten Junction, and nobody gets off until it pulls into Harvard Station.
In TV writing, I felt like Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians. There's so much more freedom in fiction writing.
When I wrote for TV, I was always thinking in terms of character and story. After fifteen years, it became hard-wired in me.
Breezy, sophisticated, hilarious, rude and aching with sweetness: LOVE, NINA might be the most charming book I've ever read.
I don't mind finding these ugly sides to my personality and exaggerating them because that's something you can write towards.
I try to begin with a strong grasp of my characters. Even if it's schematic, I need it clear in my head who these people are.
In a lot of ways, TV writing taught me how to be a good storyteller. I learned about dialogue, scenes, moving the plot forward.
I think that everyone in Seattle, their daily existence, is enriched by all the charitable giving that is courtesy of Microsoft.
I got a huge knot in my stomach because if Antarctica could talk, it would be saying only one thing: you don't belong here. (277)
If I had written something, and I had written myself into a corner, I didn't abandon it. Because I remembered: There's always more.
Both 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette' and my first novel, 'This One is Mine,' are pretty complex on a story level, and fun reads as a result.
I know what it's like to feel snobby; I know what it's like to feel anxiety; I know what it's like to feel like busted because you're crazy.
Mad About You fit my sensibility the most of any show that I worked on, and as a result, it was really fun. It felt like a very natural fit.