Well Written Quotes

If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion. ~ Joseph Brodsky

To be joining 'The Hunger Games' family is such a thrill. It deserves the hype because it's well written, handles really big subject matter, but doesn't talk down to its audience. And then there's the romance element. ~ Natalie Dormer

In America, where writers are preoccupied with the craft of writing, I always try to introduce this concept of the badly written good story. Turning the hierarchy around and putting passion on top and not craft, because when you just focus on craft, you can write something that is very sterile. It looks beautiful, but soulless. So I warn them that, often in writing programs, articulation and clarity are more important than what you actually say . . . And you say, "It's so well-written, but who gives a fuck?" For certain, the guy who wrote it doesn't give a fuck. It's not something that has to do with his life; it's just something well-written and illuminating, and writing is not about that. The best stories you usually hear are stories that people feel some type of urgency about . . .

Nobody else in the world would look at writing as craftsmanship - it's totally this Protestant hardworking ethic. You go into this kind of infinite space of imagination and you fence yourself in with all kinds of laws. Why do we have to keep playing this strange game? ~ Etgar Keret

I wish I could have a recurring role on 'Modern Family'. I think 'Modern Family' is the best comedy on television. It's extremely well written, extremely well acted and directed. ~ Patti LuPone

I like films that are well-written and concise and with not a lot of room for improvisation. ~ Patrice Leconte

If it's a really well written villain, he probably has more layers than the archetypal good person. So that would be very attractive to an actor. No one chooses to be a villain; it's usually a reaction to something else. ~ Ben Kingsley

When you people have a set up joke and the joke is set up straight and the words are just well written, I always say "C'mon, humans don't speak that way." ~ Will Gluck

There are people who are trying to write history for the general reader who can be quite tedious. That said, I do feel in my heart of hearts that if history isn't well written, it isn't going to be read, and if it isn't read it's going to die. ~ David McCullough

You can always find ways to make it different, as long as it's a really well-written script and well-written character. ~ Georgina Haig

I think the goal is to make a well written scene seem like it's improvised and/or to come up with things that you find in the room that you couldn't have known until you get into the real situation, just try to improve things as you go along. ~ Robert Downey, Jr.

A sitcom is the closest thing for me to doing stage because you work in front of an audience, and if it's well written it can be very satisfying. ~ Nathan Lane

They wanted to manipulate our songs - our fantastic, well-written songs with a soulful drive - beautiful English R&B - and turn them into pop rubbish. We might as well have been writing children's lullabies for all that did for me. We had to get away from that asshole. ~ Diane Rinella

Tell me what you like, tell me how you feel, tell me which stuff are your favourite, what you enjoy doing and so far I can give you one well written book based on this stuff!? ~ Deyth Banger

It is very good, Wisehammer, it's very well written, but it's too-too-political. It will be considered provocative."
"You don't want me to say it."
"Not tonight. We have many people against us."
"I could tone it down. I could omit 'We left our country for our country's good.'"
"That's the best line. ~ Timberlake Wertenbaker

Once something is well-written, then everything else is gravy. ~ Billy Campbell

I love a novel that's funny, and The Taxman Cometh is very funny, delightfully well-written, yet with a serious message about how government bureaucracy affects us all. Read. Enjoy. And if a comparison to Catch 22 pops into your mind, that's not surprising. ~ Marvin Kalb

The Stylemonger's criteria, though for a different reason, are as wide of the mark as those of the law, and in the same way. If the mass of the people are unliterary, he is antiliterary. He creates in the minds of the unliterary (who have often suffered under him at school) a hatred of the very word style and a profound distrust of every book that is said to be well written. And if style meant what the Stylemonger values, this hatred and distrust would be right. The ~ C.S. Lewis

Only well-written works will descend to posterity. Fulness of knowledge, interesting facts, even useful inventions, are no pledge of immortality, for they may be employed by more skilful hands; they are outside the man; the style is the man himself. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

Mary is a very well-written typical eldest child in that she puts her own needs at the forefront ... She's not as inclined to conciliate or placate. Cora is fascinated by Mary ~ Jessica Fellowes

Even if the script's well written there's something about the life of an improvisation that resonates better than a written word, sometimes. ~ John Travolta

I'd never had a host that was capable of superstition. It was an interesting sensation. Like knowing you were being watched without being able to find the watcher. It raised goose bumps on the nape of my neck. ~ Stephenie Meyer

Ben Bova seems to work very hard at working in new discoveries into his Glum Future but alas, his future is glum and not that well written. ~ James Nicoll

I try to choose the projects that I think are the most well-written and well-executed, and the rest of it is so beyond my control to be almost not worth thinking about at all. ~ Jack Davenport

There are greater depths and obscurities, greater intricacies and perplexities, in an elaborate and well-written piece of nonsense, than in the most abstruse and profound tract of school divinity. ~ Joseph Addison

The narrative songs were well-written, like an article in The New Yorker. They're nice and pat. They're more like I'm just showing I can do that when I write a song like that. It's not my true calling. ~ Stephen Malkmus

Anything I've ever read by John Irving has been really well written. ~ Luke Bryan

The emphasis is on the lost, the abandoned, the discarded sinners, God's detritus. ~ Julian Barnes

A novel of the kind that Prudence enjoyed, well written and tortuous, with a good dash of culture and the inevitable unhappy or indefinite ending, which was so like life. ~ Barbara Pym

What I like most: Reading well-written sources that take me to another world for hours at a time - and being able to call that 'work!' Also, of course, finding a gem of information that is either exactly what I was looking for, or else fits perfectly into the story in some way. ~ Linda Sue Park

I know what my limitations are as an actor, but my strength is putting myself into a well-written part. When I get in trouble is when I have to fix it, or when I have to carry it on personality. ~ George Clooney

I love working that way, and that's sort of the way that Mark, Jay, and I have been working for years, where we start with scripts that are really solid and well-written. But once we get into the scene and we start doing the work, we definitely loosen things up. ~ Steve Zissis

as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. The nineteenth century ~ Oscar Wilde

Poetry must be as well written as prose. ~ Ezra Pound

For the various spiritual forms of the imagination have a natural affinity with certain sensuous forms of art - and to discern the qualities of each art, to intensify as well its limitations as its powers of expression, is one of the aims that culture sets before us. It is not an increased moral sense, an increased moral supervision that your literature needs. Indeed, one should never talk of a moral or an immoral poem - poems are either well written or badly written, that is all. And, indeed, any element of morals or implied reference to a standard of good or evil in art is often a sign of a certain incompleteness of vision, often a note of discord in the harmony of an imaginative creation; for all good work aims at a purely artistic effect. 'We must be careful,' said Goethe, 'not to be always looking for culture merely in what is obviously moral. Everything that is great promotes civilisation as soon as we are aware of it. ~ Oscar Wilde

All your books wouldn't seem so well written if you were just a little more well read. ~ Craig Finn

Don't Shoot is a work of moral philosophy that reads like a crime novel - Immanuel Kant meets Joseph Wambaugh. It's a fascinating, inspiring, and wonderfully well written story of one man's quest to solve a problem no one thought could be solved: the scourge of inner city gang violence This is a vitally important work that has the potential to usher in a new era in policing. ~ John Seabrook

All of you favorite books wouldn't seem so well written if you were just a little bit more well read. ~ Craig Finn

And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life. ~ James Earl Jones

Most agents hate prologues. Just make the first chapter relevant and well written. ~ Andrea Brown

I'm not trying to be a poet on Twitter; I'm trying to be aware of the fact that a very simple sentence, well written, can have a very moving effect without that person knowing why. There's a deep genetic part of you that somehow, even without your permission, recognizes good language when it arrives. ~ Teju Cole

As a matter of fact, that's the reason why I've learned to speak this language, and to write it too: so I can speak in the place of a dead man, so I can finish his sentences for him. The murderer got famous, and his story's too well written for me to get any ideas about imitating him. He wrote in his own language. Therefore I'm going to do what was done in this country after Independence: I'm going to take the stones from the old houses the colonists left behind, remove them one by one, and build my own house, my own language. The murderer's words and expressions are my unclaimed goods. Besides, the country's littered with words that don't belong to anyone anymore. ~ Kamel Daoud

Look at the Coen brothers. All their minor characters are as interesting as their protagonists. If the smaller characters are well-written, the whole world of the film becomes enriched. It's not the size of the thing, but the detail. ~ Brendan Gleeson

I am the best and sharpest critic of my own work. I know myself what is and what is not well written. Anyone who doesn't write doesn't know how wonderful it is. ~ Anne Frank

Every year I hear people complain that the quality of screenplays and movies is declining. In my opinion, the vast majority of scripts written - as well as most movies that are released - are not very original, well-written, or interesting. It has always been that way, and I think it always will be. ~ Viggo Mortensen

Did the Ancient Greeks ever write anything funny - like slapstick? I mean, I think I speak for everyone when I say that there's nothing wrong with a little bit of well-written physical comedy. ~ Elle Lothlorien

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. ~ Oscar Wilde

The BBC is very much in thrall to all this techno cross-fertilisation, in much the same way that print journalists are now encouraged to blog. To the point where there is an emerging breed of sub-editors who take perfectly well-written and punctuated original copy and rewrite it so that it resembles a text message written by a 14-year-old under the influence of Bacardi Breezers. ~ Kathryn Flett

Good English, well spoken and well written will open more doors than a college degree ... Bad English will slam doors you don't even know exist. ~ William Raspberry

Actors look for characters. If they read a well-written character, and if they think the director's not an idiot, they're going to sign up and do some acting. ~ Andrew Dominik

If it's well written, even an obscene book cannot be immoral.
John McGahern, Galway, October 6th 2003. Acclaimed as the most important Irish novellist since James Joyce. ~ John McGahern

I keep a pen in my hand so that I can underline anything that strikes me as particularly interesting or well written - it's a quirk left over from my days in graduate school. ~ Kim Wright

She found that books, the well-written ones, had the power to transport her from a world that was sometimes overstressed and over stimulating to a wholly new place of the author's imaginations. ~ J.N. LaVelle

Great stories, well written and heartfelt. Prisoner of SouthernRock is an engaging and entertaining celebration of southern music, musicians and characters. ~ Chuck Leavell

There's always these giant baffling books, like 'The Da Vinci Code.' People say it's not as well written as 'Midnight's Children.' Why aren't people reading 'Midnight's Children?' Nobody knows why these phenomenons happen but they're great. ~ Denise Mina

SHADOW KNIGHT'S MATE is a compelling story, extremely well-written and alarmingly plausible. Jay Brandon does for politics what Dan Brown did for religion. ~ Sharyn McCrumb

Only those works which are well-written will pass to posterity: the amount of knowledge, the uniqueness of the facts, even the novelty of the discoveries are no guarantees of immortality ... These things are exterior to a man but style is the man himself. ~ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon

I do enjoy Gothic fiction or books about zombies if they are well written and I like vampires. ~ Roddy Doyle

I'd fallen back on my looks over and over because I didn't think I had anything else to offer, but now I was starting to see that I was actually smart. Getting a graded paper on which the professor wrote "well written!" felt a million times better than getting a 25 percent tip because some d-bag got to ogle my butt when I dropped off his burger. ~ Naya Rivera

I went into the kitchen ten minutes back. The cat was sitting on the mat.
Beale's narrative style closely resembled that of a certain book I had read in my infancy. I wish I could remember its title. It was a well-written book. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Designing well-written tests still remains a challenging task. Some complex questions may lose clarity causing difficulties in providing meaningful answers. Basically, questions should be designed in such a way that each well-prepared student can easily give a correct answer. ~ Eraldo Banovac

Sometimes a song just has to cater to whatever's goin' on. A well-written song is a song that stays true to the subject. ~ Dolly Parton

Partisans present some of the most refreshing music I've heard in a long while, uncompromising, very well written and very well played. It demands serious attention. I hear in these players a sense of common purpose and resolve, and a strong command of a dialect uniquely suited to this music. It's heartening to hear music that looks to find its own particular place. ~ Steve Swallow

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one. ~ Thomas Carlyle

She gave a little jump and hung in the air a little way above the rug, then she slowly began to be drawn downwards and dropped .. ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

I don't believe books have endings. Not the well written ones anyway... ~ Love The Stacks Bookstore

Only idiots or snobs ever really thought less of 'genre books' of course. There are stupid books and there are smart books. There are well-written books and badly written books. There are fun books and boring books. All of these distinctions are vastly more important than the distinction between the literary and the non-literary. ~ Stephen Marche

If I feel like it's a well-written script and if it speaks to me, it's something I want to do. I usually rely on my instincts when it comes to a script. ~ Michael Ealy

There is an enormous redundancy in every well-written book. With a well-written book I only read the right-hand page and allow my mind to work on the left-hand page. With a poorly written book I read every word. ~ Marshall McLuhan

I barely watch TV apart from the news. Most of it is rubbish. There's all this reality nonsense and dross. I think there's a market for a well-produced, well-written melodrama like 'Dallas.' It's pure entertainment. ~ Larry Hagman

Tears, like bitter rivers, streamed down his dried-up cheeks, as he stood swaying in his brother's arms. ~ Leon Garfield

Only sing - don't do cheap songs, don't do silly songs, just do, just do wonderful songs that are well-written. ~ Frank Sinatra

The greatest multiplex in the universe is inside your mind, and the only ticket you need is a good, well-written novel. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

And I think it's very rare to have good stories, well written comedies. ~ Sophie Marceau

I often find that a novel, even a well-written and compelling novel, can become a blur to me soon after I've finished reading it. I recollect perfectly the feeling of reading it, the mood I occupied, but I am less sure about the narrative details. It is almost as if the book were, as Wittgenstein said of his propositions, a ladder to be climbed and then discarded after it has served its purpose. ~ Sven Birkerts

There are two kinds of reviews: Good ones and bad ones. Within that sliding scale there are two other categories: Favorable and Unfavorable.

Of course, I hope for all Good Reviews that are also Favorable - but how likely is that? If a review isn't favorable, I just hope is well-written. ~ R.S. Mellette

The end of a man's life is often compared to the winding up of a well written play, where the principal persons still act in character, whatever the fate in which they undergo. ~ Joseph Addison

A little attention however to the nature of the human mind evinces that the entertainments of fiction are useful as well as pleasant. That they are pleasant when well written, every person feels who reads. But wherein is its utility, asks the reverend sage, big with the notion that nothing can be useful but the learned lumber of Greek and Roman reading with which his head is stored? I answer, every thing is useful which contributes to fix us in the principles and practice of virtue. ~ Thomas Jefferson

When you read a line that is just so well-written you just close the book and stare at the wall for a minute. ~ Anonymous

Mostly I work really unconsciously, and I think if the scenes are really well written, which they are, and if I just throw myself into it, I don't really think about it. ~ Elizabeth Reaser

If it's well written and well directed and you've got good actors to work with, acting is easy. But making sure all the ducks are in a row is the hard part. It's very rare. ~ John Lithgow

Dobie was so well written and so ahead of its time. ~ Dwayne Hickman

I love a smart, well-written show, and '30 Rock,' well, you can't get any better than that. Tina Fey poos funny. There's nothing that she does that isn't funny. That show is an example of how brilliant she is. It's so smart. They've done some brilliant commentary about the 'Housewives' with 'Queen of Jordan,' their show-within-the-show. ~ Andy Cohen

Current "literature" [is] well-written books in which disgusting people do disgusting things to other disgusting people for no apparent reason and with no apparent resolution. ~ Roberta Gellis

You see a lot of good ideas or well-written scripts that are bad ideas. ~ John McTiernan

I really enjoy mysteries, well-written fiction novels, historical novels, and the occasional vampire, wolf, human triangle as long as it's real ~ Michael Connelly

I like going after good material, well-written material. ~ Sam Underwood

If there is chemistry, and the mind and body are working as one, it's nirvana. It's like a well-written symphony or, better yet, perfect... sheet music."
"Sheet music?"
"Yeah, music between the sheets. ~ Ann Lister

I would love to be friends with Kendrick Lamar because I am just a huge fan of his music, I think he is so cool and he uses so many interesting sounds and has such good melodies and is just a beautiful rapper, his raps are just so well-written and his tracks are so insane, I am obsessed with him. ~ Alana Haim

It's so rare that you actually get to find a really well-written female lead. ~ Emily Rose

Rich as we are in biography, a well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one; and there are certainly many more men whose history deserves to be recorded than persons willing and able to record it. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Most books reviews aren't very well-written. They tend to be more about the reviewer than the book. ~ Tibor Fischer

David Frankfurter's valuable, well-written study takes us to the far reaches of demonology. In documenting the harm done by labeling others evil, he poses a challenge to those of us who believe, however regretfully, in the necessity of the concept. ~ Robert Jay Lifton

If a book is well written, I also find it too short. ~ Jane Austen

In every well-written play the battle rages between the primary powers of Good and Evil, and it is this battle which constitutes the life impulse of the play, its driving force, and is basic to all plot structures ... In any true piece of art ... the beginning and the end are, or should be, polar in principle. All the main qualities of the first section should transform themselves into their opposites in the last section. ~ Michael Chekhov

Party of Five won a Golden Globe, it was a well-written television series. ~ Neve Campbell

When 'Malcolm in the Middle' was over, I was looking for a drama more than a comedy ... but if it was a comedy that came up, it would have to be as well-written as 'Malcolm' was, and it would have to be a different kind of character than I played on that show. That's harder to come by. In drama, there were more opportunities, more options for me, and when I read ('Breaking Bad'), it was just, 'Good night, Nurse! I'm going after this sucker!' ~ Bryan Cranston

Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter. ~ Karen Joy Fowler

Code without tests is bad code. It doesn't matter how well written it is; it doesn't matter how pretty or object-oriented or well-encapsulated it is. With tests, we can change the behavior of our code quickly and verifiably. Without them, we really don't know if our code is getting better or worse. ~ Michael C. Feathers

If a scene isn't well written they'll drop your neckline to fill the void. ~ Madeline Kahn

When I went to Stan Lee - every time I was with Stan, I learned something every day. When I would do a pencil job, if I didn't have much faith in it I would hand it in and invariably Stan would make it look like it was a well-written and well-planned-out story. It made me tell people, 'If you want to become an artist, go to work at Marvel. Stan will turn you into a storyteller.' ~ John Romita, Sr.