About Writing Quotes

The opposing missions of the various characters create the plot.

I guess I write four or five hours a day, but I do it seven days a week. It's very disciplined, yes, but it's joy for me.

A hero knows it takes hard work and a long time to get published; a fool thinks it should happen immediately, because he thinks heÕs a hero already.

I drew pictures rapidly and with few lines, because I had to write most of the pieces, too, and couldn't monkey long with the drawings. The divine urge was no higher than that.

[Lord Brougham's writings on the bee's cell contain] as striking examples of bad reasoning as are often to be met with in writings related to mathematical subjects.

Writing is a way of processing our lives. And it can be a way of healing.

I resist the idea that travel writing has got to be factual.

Teaching writing puts you on the point of a pin in terms of what you want your own writing to be.

Movies are collective, cooperative endeavours, which I like a lot. But writing is all up to you, it's what's so scary; it's just you and that page. But I really like it a lot.

I have acting technique; I have singing technique; I don't have a writing technique to fall back on.

Write, write, and write some more. Think of writing as a muscle that needs lots of exercise.

The only justification for writing a novel is that it should be wonderful. Adequate is inadequate.

Being in the library is so addictive for me that I really have to exercise self-control so I can get some writing done at home.

To do six to 10 episodes of high-quality writing, and then be able to go direct my own things, and do a movie, if it comes along, sure. I just want to act and do good work.

When I write a film, all I think about is where the thing ends and how to get the audience there.

My writing voice is very much like 'Thank You for Smoking.' It's a guy's voice. It's very masculine.

In the earlier days I did most of the song writing by myself, and I got to a place in my life where I felt it was necessary to go outside my box and get some outside inspiration.

I like writing strong women, because as a straight male, there's nothing more attractive to me than a strong girl.

After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting.

All of a writer that matters is in the book or books. It is idiotic to be curious about the person.

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.

I hate that rule that says write about what you know, it leads to too many British novels about marriages going slightly wrong. Write about what you don't know, just act as though you do.

When it comes time to write the book itself I'll shut the lights out, picture the scene I'm about to write then close my eyes and go at it. Yes, I can touch type.

That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.

The rain comes down harder as I write. It sheets off the roof in torrents. I wish it would pound against me. Pound the life from my body. The flesh from my bones. The pain from my heart.

I always have been introspective, since I was a little kid, since I could remember, I was sitting in a closet trying to write out the meaning of the universe. That's been my whole life.

Charles Dickens was an incredibly cinematic writer. He wrote this one hundred years before there were movies. He writes very thematically. It is amazing.

I write novellas because I don't like loose sprawling prose.

I like to write a joke without any fat on it.The shorter the better. I cater for people with ADD, basically.

My advice would be not to write until after 35. You need some experience, and for life to knock you about a bit. Growing up is so hard you probably won't have much emotion to spare anyway.

Finding a writer who can write decent kids' dialog and finding kids that can act realistically and not 'cute' is an effort.

There will be birds and if they write your name in the sky then you can get on the buses and if they don't you have to die on the floor.

Don't 'write what you know.' Make up something new!

You call this a script? Give me a couple of 5,000-dollar-a-week writers and I will write it myself.

Here is my theory on this one. If you write things down, if there is a mystery and you try and explain it, once you've written it down for permanent, in due time, it'll be proven stupid.

He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.

I am often asked why I write, and I don't know really--I just want to.

A plot begins when somebody has something to hide.

Sometimes the easiest-seeming stories to a reader are the hardest kind to write.

Spontaneous is what you get after the seventeenth draft.

The writing is the most important bit, and performing it is just closing the circle because I'm less likely to screw it up than anyone else.

A writer judging his own work is like deceived husband - he is frequently the last person to appreciate the true state of affairs.

I just started writing stuff to kill time on summer evenings. This is why I'm always telling people who ask me what they need to do to succeed to give up, do something else.

Even more precious is his Edward writes, I'm always saying that it is not the spirits who are getting it wrong; it's more likely that I am misinterpreting their messages.

As a man lives and thinks, so he will write.

Art Gropes. It stalks like a hunter lost in the woods, listening to itself and to everything around it, unsure of itself, waiting to pounce.

Novels do take charge of the writer, and the writer is basically a kind of sheepdog just trying to keep things on track.

Writing's still the most difficult job I've ever had - but it's worth it.

I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.

Thank heaven, though, one of the few mistakes I haven't made is to talk about the unwritten book.