Re Writing Quotes

Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It's the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument.

I can only develop a stand-up show by being on stage. I can't write it. Whenever I see comedy written down, it very rarely makes me laugh.

Solitude and quiet are highly desirable, but the lack of them is no barrier to writing... The will to work builds all the seclusion that one needs.

If the headline is a good one, it is a relatively simple matter to write the copy.

Way back in the '70s, I was approached to talk about the story I'd write for a Spider-Man movie. They also talked to me about Batman. I had to think about it, but that was way, way back when.

I have a tendency sometimes to get too logical with what I'm writing, just because I want it to be kind of perfect.

I want to write a book which is the history of comedy.

I tend to have an odd split in my mind: I tend to look at it as a writer and when the writing thing is OK and I'm happy with it, then I put on my actor's hat.

Man is the animal who weeps and laughs - and writes. If the first Prometheus brought fire from heaven in a fennel-stalk, the last will take it back - in a book.

I've been very blessed to make a living in stuff I love and am totally passionate about, music and writing. So I'm eager to see what the day will bring, how I will feed that passion.

True and false fears let us refrain, Let us love nobly, and live, and add again Years and years unto years, till we attain To write threescore ; this is the second of our reign.

I do a lot of revising. Certain chapters six or seven times. Occasionally you can hit it right the first time. More often, you don't.

Anything that happens to you has some bearing upon what you write.

One must be just a little crazy to write a great novel. One must be capable of allowing the darkest, most ancient and shrewd parts of one’s being to take over the work from time to time.

Writing is something you do alone. It's a profession for introverts who wanna tell you a story but don't wanna make eye contact while telling it

[This] is very important to remember when reading or writing or talking or whatever: You are never, ever choosing whether to use symbols. You are choosing which symbols to use.

I write about broken people who need other people in order to go on. But those are the only kind of people I know to exist. We are all broken.

I learned that lesson a long time ago. When you write popular fiction, you're going to get bashed by critics.

Ten years from now I plan to be sitting here, looking out over my land. I hope I'll be writing books, but if not, I'll be on my pond fishing with my kids. I feel like the luckiest guy I know.

Nothing spiritual to write? Then have spiritual experiences.

All writing is a form of prayer.

No sooner had I stepp'd into these pleasures Than I began to think of rhymes and measures: The air that floated by me seem'd to say 'Write! thou wilt never have a better day.

All clean and comfortable I sit down to write.

Schools are really bad now. Schools are not only bad in reading, writing and arithmetic, they're worse in cultural aspects, like in music and art. They don't teach you anything.

I've never been able to write a book without one very strong character in my rucksack.

So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with.

Reading and writing, arithmetic and grammar do not constitute education, any more than a knife, fork and spoon constitute a dinner.

Writing requires a great deal of skill, just like painting does. People don't want to learn those skills.

He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem.

You can write jokes at any point of the day. Jokes are not that hard to write, or they shouldn't be when it is literally your job.

George Bernard Shaw writes like a Pakistani who has learned English when he was twelve years old in order to become an accountant.

There are no laws by which we can write Iliads.

For me the writing, when I'm going to direct it myself, is really just the first draft, and I don't change it very much; I only change it on average about two lines per movie.

I'm incapable of writing without social commentary. I like to think that it's integrated and not really heavy handedly didactic.

In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration.

When I see these guys write all this macho stuff I want to smash their heads.

The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.

When I'm writing, sometimes it gets to that place where I feel like the piece is writing itself and I'm trying not to get in the way

Yeah, we went to England to do a show and I got off the plane and I couldn't write my name or hold my hand up.

I was once told by someone wise that writing is perilous as you cannot always guarantee your words will be read in the spirit in which they were written.

I like to write on airplanes... that forced meditation time when you have nothing else to do, so your mind is allowed to go to places it wouldn't otherwise go.

I try to write songs just for the song itself. I don't try and think about where it's going to end up, that way you're writing for the good of the song.

You want songs to sound cohesive with the other songs on the record but when you first start writing you just want to write to tell the truth.

I think of myself as a comedian who has the pleasure of writing jokes about things that I actually care about.

If Franz Kafka were alive today he'd be writing about customer service.

I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.

It's just a matter of writing the kind of book I enjoy reading. Something better be happening at the beginning, and then on every page after, or I get irritated.

I really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994.

I used to think it was hard to write, and I still find the process more or less unpleasant, but if I know what I'm doing it rattles along, then the rewrite whips it into shape rather quickly.

Even though my entire writing persona is prefaced on me not being an expert, I kind of am an expert. I know a lot.