About Writing Quotes

A pioneer in this genre [ writing about the refugee crisis] : the book A Seventh Man, by the great John Berger, decades ago evoked the lives of migrant workers in Europe.

I am in total silence when I write - I don't even like the sound of the dryer going - I like the quiet.

In old days the public didn't really mind much about accuracy, but nowadays readers take it upon themselves to write to authors on every possible occasion, pointing out flaws.

It seems the best work I do is when I am really allowing the unconscious to rule the page and then later I can go back and hack around and make sense of things.

Now, if, as I think, writing should be, it's a kind of risky trade.

As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

You write a lot of books; you hope you get better.

It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days.

I write what I call 'novels of consolation' for people who are bright and sophisticated.

Every essay - the subject matter of every essay - is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.

On the one occasion where I did try writing a screenplay, I found the rewriting just unendurable.

Offhand, the only North American writers I can think of who have come from a background of rural poverty and gone on to write about it have been Negroes.

A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of his land.

Only a person with a Best Seller mind can write Best Sellers.

I write everything many times over. All my thoughts are second thoughts.

I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms for example.

In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is high; in reality, very low.

Never try to fit a target audience. Write what is true to the characters in their settings and the audience will find you.

A lot of food criticism has a similar flavor to it, and I'm probably going to write about it in a different way.

Poetry does need a bit of ferocity. The only way to attend to the fractured world is to write a ferocious kind of music, to sing that volatility.

I found it incredibly challenging to write clear prose that had the dynamism that I wanted.

Well, we're all going to die, so mortality is a part of writing and life.

No writing is good that does not tend to better mankind in some way or other.

It's an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important... and to feel that you're being published by people who really don't get it and/or don't really care.

Writing in my journal keeps me focused on my spirit and what I need or feel.

Las Vegas is incredible. Either you love it or you're a classy person with morals. I fall into the former category. It's definitely bled into my writing.

The call to write does not respect background or experience.

Literary theories will not make a writer write.

I started playing instruments. Writing didn't come until later. I didn't know how to play a keyboard but I'd listen to hits off the radio, learn them, then my hands would be ready to play.

People like to say their songs are like children, but you gotta get those kids out there so they can make some money and pay the rent.

Being able to read, write, do your sums really transforms a human being.

I write about reconciliation, but not as a miracle, as a slow, gradual process of mutual discovery - discovering one another.

I could claim any number of high-flown reasons for writing, just as you can explain certain dogs behavior... But maybe, it’s that they’re dog, and that’s what dogs do.

I'm a mom first. That's all I really care about - being a good mom and a good wife. The writing always comes second for me.

I feel I've always been writing about self-identity. How do we become who we are? So I'm just writing from experience what's concerned me.

One cannot simply decide to write apolitical poetry, in the way one decides to drink lemonade instead of tea, it's far more subliminal than that.

My favourite author is Leon Trotsky - the political philosophy and the way he writes is beautiful, and really relevant, too.

But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.

But I can't and don't ever want to write bell-yanking confetti-tossing hat-throwing poems.

I shall try to write a poem that is about the moment but doesn't betray things that are true to me as a poet.

I am writing more than I have ever done. My life has come back to me in the most extraordinary way.

I think if someone is writing continuously for 10 years and has not changed their mind about something - there's something wrong with them. They're not really thinking.

Rock n roll is what I would die for, but I love music and I love exploring, taking the challenge of playing, writing or singing... or producing.

Anyone should be very suspicious of a sentence he's written that can't be read aloud easily.

No one ever writes a book in which he is the bad guy.

It's not so much that I write well, I just don't write badly very often and that passes for good on television.

I've been writing and wanting to direct for a long time.

A change of work is a good rest for the mind if you're constantly focused on writing. I like to work with timber and be creative on that side sometimes as well.

The impulse to write a novel comes from a momentary unified vision of life.

Maybe one thing is that you have to find the best way to write whatever works better for you.