What Is Writing Quotes

I think one of the best things you can do is write really sad songs that touch some semblance of... I guess 'hope' is the right word?

Wordiness is a sickness of American writing. Too many words dilute and blur ideas.

Nothing comes easily. My work smells of sweat.

Each day that I don't write I get more fragmented.

Blocks usually stem from fear of being judged. If you imagine the world is listening, you'll never write a line.

Writing has often been accompanied by terror, silences, and then wild bursts of private laughter that suddenly make all the dread seem worthwhile.

Despite all the cynical things writers have said about writing for money, the truth is we write for love. That is why it is so easy to exploit us.

I had to see and feel and be with the thing that I wanted to write about.

Writing is a hard business...but nothing makes you feel better.

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it. Financial security then is a great help as it keeps you from worrying.

The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before, and not too damned much after.

The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it.

Some writers are only born to help another writer write one sentence.

Read anything I write for the pleasure of reading it. Whatever else you find will be the measure of what you brought to the reading.

But it is not at all unthinkable for anyone to tell a writer how to write. It comes with the territory.

Acting becomes my real job, writing becomes my second job, and then when I turn 50, I think I'm going to open up an interior decorating company.

I have a thing - I call it magic - but I feel like I can write stuff down in the middle of the night and wake up and it happens. I write what I want in my journal.

Here, beside this great black surface that is my desk, I feel as though I am on a desert island.

I think that as you learn more about writing you learn to be direct.

If you do everything in your power to avoid writing and still can't, then you must be a writer.

Usually it is a painful process (writing), "Superman" came in 45 minutes; "100 Years" in four months.

If prolific is writing a lot of songs, I'm that. If it's writing a lot of good songs, I'm something else.

Not-writing is a good deal worse than writing.

Writing is a good example of self-abandonment. I never completely forget myself except when I am writing and I am never more completely myself than when I am writing.

I write to discover what I know.

You get a real person down there and his talking will take care of itself.

I spend three hours a day writing and the rest of my day getting over it.

The only way, I think, to learn to write short stories is to write them, and then try to discover what you have done.

When Toni Morrison said 'write the book you want to read,' she didn't mean everybody.

Instead of writing it wrong six times and then writing it right, I think it wrong six times and then write it right the seventh time.

You should make it hard on yourself to write so you’re easier to read.

When I started publishing, I got offers to write for big magazines. But I would always say, "Well, it's not that I don't want to write for these big magazines, but you can't edit it."

I have the exact opposite problem of every writer I've ever met: Every writer I've ever met writes things that are too long, and they have to edit them down.

I think writing for me has always been a matter of fear. Writing is fear and not writing is fear. I am afraid of writing and then I'm afraid of not writing.

Not writing is probably the most exhausting profession I've ever encountered. It takes it out of you. It's very psychically wearing not to write - I mean if you're supposed to be writing.

I write a sentence a thousand times, changing it all the time to look at it in different ways.

After the journey around the world, writing Hope's Edge, I began to see that it is not possible to know what's possible - and therein lies our freedom.

For me, just showing up for the traveling and writing gave me the power to overcome my fear of fear.

If we want to write, it makes sense to read—and to read like a writer. If we wanted to grow roses, we would want to visit rose gardens and try to see them the way that a rose gardener would.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

I just admire people like Woody Allen, who every year writes an original screenplay. It's astonishing. I always wished that I could do that.

It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.

I had a strong desire to write and some free time.

I find that if somebody is writing and drawing a comic book, planning it to be a movie and a game at the same time tends to lead to a pretty lame job.

The number one reason I write is to come to schools and see my readers. I would do it for free.

I would love to be able to write a tragedy in my imagination--it would turn into a masterpiece.

It won't be long before we'll be writing together again. I just hope they have a decent piano up there.

Good writers have two things in common: they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers.

A book should long for pen, ink, and writing-table: but usually it is pen, ink, and writing-table that long for a book. That is why books are so negligible nowadays.

Writing to me is a voyage, an odyssey, a discovery, because I'm never certain of precisely what I will find.