About Writing Quotes

I have written chiefly because, though I have often dreaded the necessity, I have found it more painful, in the end, not to write.

I suppose I am a born novelist, for the things I imagine are more vital and vivid to me than the things I remember.

I had no place in any coterie, or in any reciprocal self-advertising. I stood alone. I stood outside. I wanted only to learn. I wanted only to write better.

O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!

People have been writing premature obituaries on the women's movement since its beginning.

Maybe at 20 you can write well, but I don't think you could do what I do. Some things have to happen to you first.

You can teach someone who cares to write columns, but you can’t teach someone who writes columns to care.

I write poetry anyway and have for years and years. For me, putting fiction and poetry together is like the best of both worlds.

I write books for young adults because I truly connect with them on some very deep level. They are our hope, our future, and inspiring them to be the best they can be is very important to me.

Authors have to write for their characters, for who they are, that's the strength of books. Don't worry about censors. Just write the story you need to tell and the rewards will come.

If I did anything 'next,' I would do writing.

I definitely write about a lot of dreamy, surreal stuff. I do end up going to a surreal world with my music, but I also like the idea of there being really real stuff as well.

I think I get certain pleasure from writing what I'm performing.

Being an insomniac only slows me down. I try not to write at night, as I'm concerned that this will affect the quality.

Why write for the orchestra? For one thing it's a very challenging problem.

Academic writing you have to get right. Fiction you have to get plausible. And there's a world of difference.

When you're writing your own fiction, you don't have to ride two horses.

If I have learned how to write fiction it's by working with great writers and getting them to explain their craft to me so that I can do it in English.

It does not take much to imagine the humanity of people you don't know. An American author does not need to know a word of Arabic to write a book like the one I wrote.

There's no way I can compete with someone who can write rap or rock and roll. Nor do I wish to. But I've always kept up to date with music changes. I worked very hard not to type myself.

To me, a book is a book, an electronic device is not, and love of books was the reason I started writing.

Some say writing is its own reward. I write for money, but writing for money is not so bad, especially when that writing brings you joy.

To conform within rational limits to a given style is no more servile than to pay one's taxes or to write according to the rule of grammar.

That's just a part of being an artist: you can't write great stuff all the time, because if you did, then you'd be inhuman. The human side of people is that sometimes they fail.

I don't have a computer. I am the Luddite of rock'n'roll, I don't have a portable phone. I write things down.

It's so easy to write songs about misery and hard times and sadness. It's much more difficult to write songs about happy and chirpy stuff.

I am such a Luddite when it comes to making music. All I can do is write at the piano.

I've always felt writing a song was a bit like going on location. That's true in an almost literal sense. Where you are seeps in somehow.

I'm a man with a mission in two or three editions And I'm giving you a longing look Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book.

I always knew I wanted to be a musician, and I always knew I wanted to write, 'cause the people I was listening to all wrote. I never thought it was an option to sing anyone else's songs.

Anytime I write something that's trying to be too smart, it doesn't work.

The literary man? An indiscreet man, who devaluates his miseries, divulges them, tells them like so many beads: immodesty-the sideshow of second thoughts-is his rule; he offers himself.

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

Drama school is fundamentally practical. I didn't write any essays, so I came out with a BA honors degree in acting.

Historical fiction is a collaboration between the time in which it's written and the time that it's writing about and the far future, when we don't know what people are going to think about yet.

If I don't write every day for one week or even, frankly, one year, I don't really think too much about that.

A good book is a good book, and there are a lot of different ways to approach writing or reading one.

I tend to think of writing as a more collaborative project than I think some people do.

Write me of hope and love, and hearts that endured.

I try to write about real women, real people - in other words flawed characters.

I always find something in common with my protagonist, particularly when I write in the first person.

I've always loved sister stories in fiction, from the time I was little, reading about Beezus and Ramona. I've always wanted to write a sister story.

When I write, I picture the characters a certain way in my head, and they're not like any actor or actress. It's almost hard for me to let go of my ideas as to the way they look.

Nothing trains you better to write fiction than being really good at writing about your own interiority.

When you write in the third person, you get to imagine other people's interiority.

I already feel a bit annoyed at myself for writing screenplays. It's a bit, I don't know, model-singer-dancer-actress that went to a posh school. There's something too weirdly predictable about it.

If life ever stops inspiring us to write, it's time to stop doing what we do.

I do write fiction, and I find it more difficult, but also more liberating. On the one hand, you can make up the story, but you have to make up the story.

I love poetry, but I find it so difficult to write well.

I write one poem a year, usually in January or February.