About Writing Quotes

Write. Finish things. Get them published. Write something else while you're waiting for someone to publish the first thing.

Start telling the stories that only you can tell.

There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that, but you are the only you.

People think my work is therapeutic. I don't see it that way. It's not like I'm saving money from a weekly therapy visit by writing down my life.

As a culture moves from orality to writing to printing to televising, its ideas of truth move with it.

I write pop songs. But I think it is sprinkled with a lot of counter-culture references. It ranged from rap to hip hop to trip hop, house, drum and bass, and experimental and improv and jazz.

Most of my books are about contemporary subjects, and the world changes so fast that I'm lucky when events haven't overtaken the book I'm writing at the moment.

The Atlantic really gave me my writing career - even just the conviction to be a writer.

I'm not trying to write cinematic novels, but I have been told several times that my style is cinematic.

write what readers want to read, which isn’t necessarily what you want to write.

It doesn't matter to me whether I write in a man's voice or a woman's, or first or third person for that matter. Those choices come down to the story and I just go with it.

I write out of enthusiasm. Momentum that comes from a new idea. Eagerness to explore. I also write out of fear - fear of losing an idea - fear of feeling stagnant.

I consider myself to be first and foremost a comic writer. The way I entertain myself - especially in those long and grim hours in the office - is to write stuff I find funny.

Don't write poems to make girls like you, because it will not make them like you but it will give them something to quote back at you later in life.

Writing is a consciousness formally at work in the territory of the imaginary.

When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely.

If I get an idea I put it on tape and somebody else writes it out.

I know there's bands that might write something that sounds like The Smiths, and they'll go, 'Oh, it sounds like The Smiths, we've got to make it sound not like The Smiths.'

When I write, I can be heard. And known. But nobody has to look at me. Nobody has to see me at all.

Certainly the plagiarism, and dealing with the fallout of it, was the most difficult thing I've ever faced since I started writing.

Words have to be crafted, not sprayed. They need to be fitted together with infinite care.

The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.

I went back to bumming around New York, writing freelance stuff for Car & Driver and such.

While I'm writing, I'm far away; and when I come back, I've gone.

Reading is like breathing in, writing is like breathing out.

Just going through a lot in my life, becoming more confident in myself, writing my own music and just really getting in the studio and just doing it.

When I'm writing something, if it gets too serious, I just can't bear it, so I take a step back and take the overall scene in and vent the air a little bit.

I've been working on my autobiography, just pecking away in longhand. The more you write, the more you remember. The more you remember, the more detail you recall. It's not all pleasant!

Content, it dreams awake, and spins the fabric of tales. There is really nothing to be done with such imagery except to use it: in writing, in art.

Anyone who has problems, or worries, anyone who laughs and cries, anyone who feels can write. It's only talking on paper... talking about the things that matter to us.

Writing isn't hard - no harder than ditch digging.

I look at albums like novels. If you write a really good scene or a really good moment, just because you wrote it, doesn't mean that it fits with the story that you're writing.

When I write songs I write for myself...I'm writing it as a form of expression, and hoping to find an audience, an audience that responds to music that is honest and lyrical and tells stories.

There are two kinds of typical days. There's the typical day when I'm writing a novel, and there's the typical day when I'm not.

I was a standup comedian, which is kind of like writing and directing yourself.

There's a film you write, there's a film you shoot, and there's a film that you cut - and they're all different.

Always write from your gut, no matter what the project is.

What I love about writing is the contradictions we all embody as human beings.

I'm still looking to write a great song.... You always are. You know, you never think, 'Well, that's enough ... that's good enough.'

When I write, there are times -- not always -- when I hear John (Lennon) in my head, ... I'll think, OK, what would we have done here?, and I can hear him gripe or approve.

I taught writing classes at the University of Pennsylvania for a number of years and I realized that all you can do is encourage people and give them assignments and hope they will write them.

In my early twenties, that's when I really began to write. Before that, I was too busy working, keeping myself going.

It took me 40 years to write my first book.

I'd have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

Every novel generates its own climate, when you get going.

Songwriters can’t explain. You get an idea and you don’t know where it’s come from. And if you’re lucky, you have a pencil or pen and can write it down.

If you're hooked on the physical act of writing, there's a good chance of your hanging in there long enough to say what you were born to say.

Writing is a kind of performing art, and I can't sit down to write unless I'm dressed. I don't mean dressed in a suit, but dressed well and comfortably and I have to be shaved and bathed.

I desire that death find me ready and writing, or if it please Christ, praying and intears.

You have to roll up your sleeves and be a stonecutter before you can become a sculptor - command of craft always precedes art: apprentice, journeyman, master.