I was a writer. I just wasn't a very good one. I was lucky enough to have a playwriting teacher who told me that I'd be a better actor than I would a playwright.

I think that everything you do helps you to write if you're a writer. Adversity and success both contribute largely to making you what you are. If you don't experience either one of those you're being deprived of something.

Success comes to a writer as a rule so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.

Writers as they gain success feel like outsiders because writers don't come together in real groups.

There's that unwritten schism that literary writers get all the awards and commericals writers get all the success.

The first thing is that we're being attacked by both the Writers Guild and the Producers Guild. Both of these groups are trying to diminish the importance and strength of the director. They're trying to do it through both frontal and side attacks.

To achieve lasting literature fictional or factual a writer needs perceptive vision absorptive capacity and creative strength.

I love sports as all Bostonians seem to. I love books and movies as all writers seem to.

I told another ESPN friend here I love all sports. I can't think of any I don't love. I've even come to appreciate cricket. Maybe I could play a sportswriter. I don't know. Anything in the sports realm is appealing.

One of my first jobs was at the Boston Globe. I worked in the sports department six months a year. When I was ready to graduate the sports editor gave me a job as a schoolboy sports writer.

I wanted to be a sportswriter because I loved sports and I could not hit the curve ball the jump shot or the opposing ball carrier.

I'm a Hollywood writer so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain.

If I could have married my wife and been a sports writer for the past 30 years I wouldn't be sitting here - but I don't think I'd be sitting someplace where I was sorry to be sitting.

It's a little bit in the genes because my brother is a journalist and my father was a sports writer.

I think having a vision can make someone an influential man. I'm not talking about acting or anything like that I'm talking about people I admire whether it's a writer or a musician or a sports figure or a politician whatever.

I was training to be a lawyer... I was president of the law society at Glasgow University and my bass guitarist was my secretary of my law society the lead guitarist and writer worked at the law firm that I worked.

The writer is the person who stands outside society independent of affiliation and independent of influence.

I believe that writers unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite are at heart people who live by night a little bit outside society moving between delinquency and conformity.

In a repressive society a writer can be deeply influential but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption the act of terror may be the only meaningful act.

I've told several writers this and again I get back to it but if you want to make God smile tell him your plans.

I started in this racket in the early '70s and when I was president of the Science Fiction Writers of America of which I was like the sixth president I was the first one nobody ever heard of.

Science fiction readers probably have the gene for novelty and seem to enjoy a cascade of invention as much as a writer enjoys providing one.

Many writers upon the science of political economy have declared that it is the duty of a nation first to encourage the creation of wealth and second to direct and control its distribution. All such theories are delusive.

I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction.