Martin Henderson Quotes

As a writer, it's fun to create. And once you get into a long-running show with very established characters and a very established tone and format, after a while it's a really great job, but that's what it is - a job.

I find that screenwriting is at best kind of a hackwork in some ways.

These things are hard to pin down. We work on a script a bit, then work on a different one.

I write screenplays in the middle of the night.

I love writing. It's one of my favorite jobs. Of the things I get to do, I love sitting in a room and coming up with ideas, and I love going home and pounding them out.

Personally, I read a lot of scripts.

I look forward to every script that comes down the pike.

One of the things I learnt over the years is that there is a craft to writing, like there is a craft to acting. I hadn't done my apprenticeship as a writer. I did try to be a writer for hire but I'm not any good at it.

The best thing for me is, when I'm not working, is to be at home and to have a script or two scripts is better, and to be just walking around the house and just thinking about the lines.

It's real easy for me to write a lot of stories. I just go and I live through something, and I go home and write about it. It's that quick.

When you're writing a story in bits and pieces, month in and month out, there really isn't time or space for reflection, no room to learn what those scripts had to teach you.

By the time I wrote 'Any Given Sunday' or 'Bats,' I sort of knew what my job was in terms of what a writer of dialogue does.

I despise writing in general, but yeah, I love writing the stuff that I direct.

I don't read that many books - I tend to read scripts for projects.

I like having an idea, or hearing an idea, and getting it into a proper script.

A lot of young writers ask me about my process. They know what they want to write - but they need to know how. What's the right way? How do the professionals do it? What's the secret?

I get so many scripts a day but none of them inspires me. If I get a good inspiring script, then I will be most happy to make it into a film.

I come at it from a different angle of attack with each novel, searching for the technological texture the story demands. There isn't a recipe; it's more of an instinct.

I'd been writing fiction for 50 years, since I was 19. And when you write fiction, it becomes a way of thinking: there's always a novel around. The strange thing was that after 'Remember Me,' there wasn't.

I knew as far back as 2001 that I would write a book called 'A Visit From the Goon Squad,' though I had no idea what kind of book it would be.

I'm a bore. I save all my energy for my characters.

I love doing the research for the novels. For me, the writing is hard work.

Writing a book is an emotional odyssey, sometimes exhilarating, other times deflating.

There is a myth that writers get to choose their stories. You don't get to choose your story any more than you get to choose your children. You can make the decision to write, but beyond that, at the end of the day, it's going to come out how it's going to come out.

Books arrive in my head all at once, and then it becomes an 18-month process of getting it all down on paper.