Ryan Murphy Quotes

I became a copy boy. Not for long. I started writing stories.

My own career started in New York at the 'Associated Press', a fast-paced news agency where we rarely had time for deep reporting.

I hope to keep writing journalism as long as I write fiction; it's afforded me such amazing adventures and opportunities. It does take a lot of time, so it's hard to do both at once, but I try to do a big journalism piece every couple of years, and I'll hopefully continue with that.

I was fortunate that I was at newspapers for eight years, where I wrote at least five or six stories every week. You get used to interviewing lots of different people about a lot of different things. And they aren't things you know about until you do the story.

Being a professional writer is not an easy way to make a living.

I say to people, 'Do you have any idea how hard it is to do that, to write 7,000 words in 10 hours or 12 hours for the front page of the 'New York Times' and to know that they trust you so much that that it's going to lead the paper?' It's hard. I mean, it's a feat.

I wasn't the greatest reporter in the world, but I wasn't starting at zero.

I don't think there's any connection between my journalism career and my film career. They are two totally different mediums and very different skills.

Newspaper men, perhaps more than any other class, are rated by ability.

When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't true. What became important was to have a point of view.

I've written thousands of stories, started hundreds of news cycles.

Scriptwriting is the toughest part of the whole racket... the least understood and the least noticed.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd probably be working in journalism.

Well, I'm a writer by nature, and I got a little bit - a little taste of a daily fast-paced writing job, writing career, and I loved it.

I'm not a big fan of journalism schools, except those that are organized around a liberal arts education. Have an understanding of history, economics and political science - and then learn to write.

The best writers who have put pen to paper have often had a journalism background.

Well I just always wanted to be a newspaper reporter.

My father was a journalist.

Anybody who likes writing a book is an idiot. Because it's impossible; it's like having a homework assignment every stinking day until it's done. And by the time you get it in, it's done and you're sitting there reading it, and you realize the 12,000 things you didn't do. I mean, writing isn't fun. It's never been fun.

I think journalism is useful training for a writer in the way it takes the preciousness out of the pragmatic side of the craft.

I don't enjoy writing newspaper articles any more than people like reading them. I'm a standup comic, not a journalist, although sometimes onstage I will say: 'What else is in the news?' Writing is work, which I'm not comfortable with.

I love stories. I just enjoy telling stories and watching what these characters do - although writing continues to be just as hard as it always was.

I love writing journalism because it's all over in two hours and comes straight off the top of the head. Writing novels is soooooo much harder. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.

The biggest mistake you can make is assuming that creativity will hit you all at once and the muse will carry you to the end of the book on feather wings while 'Foster the People' plays gently in the background. Storytelling is work. Pleasurable work, usually, but it is work.

For many years I was engaged in journalism, writing articles and chronicles for the daily press without ever joining the staff of any newspaper.