Prose Quote by Joyce Johnson

[Jack] Kerouac was writing fiction. What he did when he wrote about me...he made me out with Russian Countesses and Swiss accounts and other…

— William S. Burroughs

“I realized Jack [Kerouac] was deeply committed to writing. Kesey was just as deeply committed to living and experiencing the lives of others; for…

— Sterling Lord

He invented this idea of telling the life story of a great writer through becoming his characters and becoming him. It was such a…

— Simon Callow

All good writers inspire me as I have never thought I was any good. As far as a writer who made me think I…

— Henry Rollins

Any writer takes inspiration from what they read and watch, and over their career works on forming their own voice. I think it was…

— Tim Lebbon

I had the idea in my twenties that a writer could immediately become the late Henry James. Henry James himself had to mature. Even…

— Cynthia Ozick

Even before he had one book published, Jack was one of those people you could feel was very special.

— David Amram

What brought me to the table was Raymond Chandler and, to a lesser degree, Ross Macdonald and Dashiell Hammett. I was basically inspired to…

— Michael Connelly

I wanted to be a writer-performer like the Pythons. In fact, I wanted to be John Cleese, and it took me some time to…

— Douglas Adams

I have known a handful of producers who actually were equal or superior to the writers with whom they worked. These producers were a…

— Ben Hecht

“As most real writers do, he wrote because he had something to say, not because of any specific ambition to be a writer.”

— James Hilton

By the time someone gave me some samples of standard screenplays I was already beyond that stuff, because I was not only a tinkerer…

— William Monahan