About Writing Quotes

You can be the world's greatest hero or its most mild-mannered citizen, but the only person who can write your story...is you.

Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit.

I don't paint anymore. I haven't since I abandoned it at 19, in order to begin writing seriously.

I plan less and less. It's a great benefit of writing lots, that you get good at holding long narratives in your head like a virtual space.

Let love write on you for awhile.

The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible.

When I write something that would have made me laugh as a 10-year-old, or would have scared me or would have excited me, I know I'm onto something.

In some ways, my gift for music and writing was born out of tragedy, really, and loss.

I worry about being a fogy and just writing for orchestras. Like, really, I should be doing more electronic stuff, I feel. Laptops as part of the orchestra, and installation sound, and speakers.

Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.

When I write, I make my memories tangible, and in this way I can get rid of them.

A friend said to me I'm like a walking New Yorker article. It's true! That's how I write. That's how I think.

All my stuff is pretty seamless - like now, while I'm touring [Yesterday I Sang The Blues], today I'm going to go in the studio, I'm writing my next one. For me it's continual.

Method is not less requisite in ordinary conversation than in writing, provided a man would talk to make himself understood.

Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.

I love new writing, new blood, modern works by unknown writers.

Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.

IT is difficult to speak or write with becoming moderation or propriety, on topics to which we are biased by prejudice, interest, or even principle.

Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued.

'Firecracker' was such a fun song to write and to perform.

I think it's a very bad idea for someone to start writing for a readership.

I think that's an interesting point of being a songwriter, is to write songs that make people think.

I'm supposed to be taking time off. But I'm still writing and I have this Gap advert lined up.

I write to be the characters that I am not.

One writes to find words' meanings.

Writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy and freedom.

I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.

Without craft, art remains private. Without art, craft is merely hackwork.

The first sentence cant be written until the final sentence is written.

I believe every one of us possesses a fundamental right to tell our own story.

The vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I've written, but to challenge my writing this story at all, speaks of what the book is about: fear of disapproval.

The best books come from someplace deep inside.... Become emotionally involved. If you don't care about your characters, your readers won't either.

I am certainly a fearful person, but fearless in my writing. So there's that other person inside.

The artwork had very little to do with the thought process, and the writing too, for that matter. What happens, happens, and it happens outside the brain.

If I were to agree to write the music for your beautiful poem, it would tie your poem up for some years as I have agreements and obligations which I must respect.

Writing is the best way to talk without being interrupted.

Talent is a question of quantity. Talent does not write one page; it writes three hundred.

There is nothing like literature: I lose a cow, I write about her death, and my writing pays me enough to buy another cow.

Style means the right word. The rest matters little.

But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano / act / paint / write a decent play?" Yes . . . the same age you will be if you don't.

An artist paints, dances, draws, writes, designs, or acts at the expanding edge of consciousness. We press into the unknown rather than the known. This makes life lovely and lively.

Sweden formally writing back to the United Nations to say, 'No, we're not going to [recognise the UN ruling], so leaving open their ability to extradite.

Science Fiction will never run out of things to wonder about until the human race ceases to use its brain.

There was a period of time in America where the advertising world actually went to the housewives of America and had them write jingles that would appeal to them. It was actually brilliant marketing.

I guess I'm not that aware of such a big fan base. I have a few core people who write me no matter what I'm doing, but I hardly have sacks of mail being dropped on my door!

I'm writing a novel about two actresses who go to New York, because that's what I know about. One has lost touch with reality, disappears and is picked up by a man.

Stereotypes, they're sensual, cultural weapons. That's the way that we attack people. At an artistic level, stereotypes are terrible writing.

My rule has always been, write the next part of the book that you seem to know well. So I won't necessarily write chapter two after chapter one.

If you don't write good music, people aren't going to listen to anything you say.