About Writing Quotes

It was like there was a pile of kindling that was in the back of my imagination just waiting there. Once I lit it, it just flared up and I kept getting ideas and ideas.

My wife and I are involved in writing/publishing/promotion twenty-four/seven. It isn't a day job; it's life.

I didn't write poems for a number of years after graduate school because the criticisms of other students in the workshops wouldn't quiet down in my mind when I tried to work.

Energy seems to be the more critical of those two variables, because if I'm really feeling the push/pull to write, then I'll make the time.

I was thinking what I usually think about when I write: what the next word should be, whether my character should be an emu farmer or a wallaby farmer, the searing pain in my right temple.

I write all the time, and I write a lot of songs, but before I started putting out records those songs always just ended up on stuff that I did with The Babies.

Writing was always an aspiration, but I'd kept it a secret even from myself.

I'm always most interested in writing about things that I don't understand.

Poetry and prose are of equal importance to me as a reader, and there doesn't seem to be much difference in my own writing.

[Calvin Trilllin] is not writing about things that I can criticize. I can call these other people out for what I think they are not doing. There's a big difference.

I talked to [Larry] Kramer a little bit about it while I was writing 'Remembering Denny' . Denny was one of those people who took a long time to come out.

I was raped. That was a hard thing to write about. I never owned that part of it. Guys don't look at themselves as being raped. We're not raised that way.

I don't write poetry for the New Yorker. My poems appear in the Nation, mostly.

I made a deal with myself that whenever I smoke weed, I have to be doing something productive: writing, recording, cutting a podcast, editing, etc.

I write a lot about my experiences and the people I meet. Ive got a lot of material. But a book about me? It seems sort of odd.

I like narrative, and I ultimately am in love with the men and women I write about, most of them.

The Irish didn't read and write for a couple of thousand years, and I think we developed good memories and recall. We have a sense of the revelatory detail. I look for them.

The short of it is, as an aspiring writer, there is nothing as damaging to your credibility as saying that you don't like to read.

Even after The Kite Runner was published I continued to practice for another eighteen months. But I had always had a love of writing and a compulsion to do it.

My wife is my in-home editor and reads everything I write.

I wanted to write about Afghanistan before the Soviet war because that is largely a forgotten period in modern Afghan history.

I am not a serious person. I don't claim any profundity for any of my writing.

I am prolific. Any rubbish I write gets published, so books keep churning out.

I don't tell 'U.S. Weekly' which parties I'm going to. I write songs.

I could write a book on the things I've done drunk.

I've got my own studio, so I sit in my studio writing and if I get a great take, that's the take.

I don't write songs thinking about formats, where is it going to get played, who am I gonna please, what's the outlet for it.

I've never had much attraction to writing fanfiction. I don't spend much time thinking about properties I don't own, as it's 'wasted' brain-cycles.

I'm an obsessive writer who needs and loves revision. Writing helps me learn and helps me teach.

I'm accountable - this sounds emo - to black American writing, Southern writing, Southern black American writing, American writing and my people. That's kind of what keeps me accountable.

I write from what's in my heart. I write what I love and have always done that.

I never had any other thought in my mind. I was gonna write songs, I was gonna be a star and a singer and I never thought of doing anything else.

I love to write, to sing, to make music. Not to act: I am horrible.

Writing is always a process of discovery—I never know the end, or even the events on the next page, until they happen. There’s a constant interplay between the imagining and shaping of the story.

Its impossible to control the reception of your work - the only thing you can control is the experience of writing itself, and the work you create.

It's hard to write about a love story with a broken heart.

I wish I could say I write 9-5. It's usually more like 8-6, every day but the weekends.

As a university student, I tried hard to write poems in Korean. It was at that time that I foresaw my death and the world's death. I think my poems started at that time.

When I first started to write poetry, I used to feel as if my tongue would go numb.

The editing process is a necessary evil. I can write until the cows come home but it is all garbage until it gets edited.

My experiences always influence my writing, but usually only on an emotional level. I have experienced death of a family member and it's easy to dredge up those feelings and get them on the page.

If somebody writes something and it's true, you're not gonna be able to prevail and get damages, hear it.

Other writers definitely influence my writing. What encourages me and inspires me is when I read a good book. It makes me want to be a better writer.

I haven't stopped writing which is good. I'm scared to stop completely otherwise it might lead to stagnancy.

I'm much more into old-world, intimate conversations on the phone. I like to write letters.

If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.

I started teaching myself guitar because I loved singing so much. Then one day kind of out of the blue I found I was writing a song. It just happened organically.

I've mainly been sampling jazz because the tone of the chords are expressive in itself, so it's quite nice to write over.

I actually find a lot of pleasure in writing lyrics.

[Rejection] made me quit writing once. For six months. I started up again when my then seven-year-old son asked me to start writing again because I was too grumpy when I wasn't writing.