About Writing Quotes

I found that married life gave me the necessary freedom to follow an ambition which had been with me since childhood; and so I started to write in earnest.

I cannot understand why some people try to write a history of photography that is separated from the history of modern art.

To do the writing, I have to have time to do research.

The writings of women are always cold and pretty like themselves. There is as much wit as you may desire, but never any soul.

I write and film history; I don't make it.

As long as the writer cannot write for the two billion men who are hungry, he will be oppressed by a feeling of malaise.

You see, the contemporary writer must write through his intimations of unease, while trying to elucidate them.

In Les Mots I explain the origin of my madness, of my neurosis. This analysis may help the young who dream of writing.

Everything in my past, in my training, everything that has been most essential in my activity up to now has made me above all a man who writes, and it is too late for that to change.

Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.

I fell into the books, and left myself there for safekeeping.

Every word written is a net to catch the word that has escaped.

There are so many separate selves; no one who writes creatively hasn't felt that.

I think of myself in a continuum as a woman. Two hundred years ago, it would have been very difficult for me to write at all.

Writing has to have a great deal of certainty and self-assurance, but it's not arrogant.

In Beautiful, Mr. Shearer writes with humor and has fun with some of the glorious nonsense of Lamarr's movies.

I'm a fairly fast, but sloppy writer, so I'm a big fan of re-writing, and re-writing again.

When I got a little older, I started writing for the high school newspaper, The Maroon Wave, and that's when I fell in love with journalism.

One of the most challenging aspects of writing a memoir is finding your own voice, and you should be very careful about being influenced by someone else's voice.

Read heavily in the area where you want to write. Be aware of what's selling and what's doing well but don't try to write to market trends; they are fleeting.

My intention was always to direct and writing things just became convenient and happened.

After I write a sequence, I just open the script and then sit at the piano keyboard and "play" the script. (And because I also draw and paint, sometimes I sketch out the action as well.)

My dream project is a sports film, because I love writing emotional music and a sports film is one of the few places you can do it without being melodramatic.

I also write plays, so I understand the writers mind, and how obsessed you can get writing.

There's no real formula for doing it, it's either just living life and writing down a joke you think of in the middle of the day and then pieces those together later.

When I read any book, if it's really good I get lost in the writing whether it's fiction or non-fiction. I'm in the story not thinking about who wrote it.

People would say, Can we develop a sitcom around you? and I would say, Not interested. I'm very happy doing standup and writing and taking my kids to school.

I know people my age (early 40s) who insist upon only writing. You know what we call them? Ex-journalists.

I always think its easier for me to write without thinking about the strict meter that's required for songs and song structures and things like that. It's much easier to just write on the page.

I've always wrestled with the difference between plot and structure, and after re-reading a lot of writing books I realized I wasn't alone.

One of the most important things as a writing instructor is to provide a lot of different entry points to subjects. To not impose your own personal experience as the One True Way.

Angela Carter's fiction blew me away and really instilled a passion for writing, bolstered by Vladimir Nabokov. But in general, I can't point to any one thing. I just always loved books and writing.

Trust your imagination. Don't be afraid to fail. Write. Revise. Revise. Revise.

The music I listen to while writing is really scene-specific. It's just a great motivator, a way to put myself in the mood.

I think a lot of young aspiring writers get misdirected; they think 'I ought to write this, even though I enjoy reading that'. What you have to do is write what you enjoy reading.

Throat clutching from the outset! The Never List stands as a sterling example of psychological thriller writing at its best. Cancel appointments and give up on sleep. It's that kind of book.

The outline is 95 percent of the book. Then I sit down and write, and that's the easy part.

The discipline required for athletics carried through to writing. You call it obsession. I call it discipline. By the way, I see nothing wrong with that.

I'm not taking any interest in politics. I'm not involved in politics in any way. My life is in writing now.

I don't think an actor's job is to be recognized. I think an actor's job is to facilitate the writing in a way that changes the way people think. No other business does that.

No matter how long your've been at it, you always start from scratch.

If love were endless, if it were on tap, it wouldn't hit us the way it does. And we certainly wouldn't write about it.

Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be.

I'm not really an autobiographical writer, though I use lots of stuff from my life to make my stories seem real. But when I actually write about myself, I get very confused.

They're just memories now. Time to write them off.

There's a kind of acting that goes on in my head when I'm writing a character where I put myself in their place.

I think there's a real connection between acting and writing novels because the way I write characters has a little bit to do with the method acting that I was taught in high school and college.

I don't think talking about myself making songs is a very interesting topic, there are so many other more engaging things to think about and write about.

[Louis] Brandeis is writing directly to us. His clear voice comes through a century and he's speaking to us and he's galvanizing us and he's persuading us. And that's why I love to read the prose.

Kristofferson was writing what was really in his heart and saying it in ways we hadn't heard up till that point.