Writing Quotes

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.

Who knew paper and ink could be so vicious

Anything is possible on a train: a great meal, a binge, a visit from card players, an intrigue, a good night's sleep, and strangers' monologues framed like Russian short stories.

Your past experiences will flavour your future ones, that is human nature.

...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.

Why write about the past? Well, there's more of it.

I never reread what I've written. I'm far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I've done.

It's amazing that a man who is dead can talk to people through these pages. As long as this books survives, his ideas live.

Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.

Begin with another's to end with your own.

I think with my right hand.

I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing, Literary and Dramatic.

I'm no romantic, surfing, California boy. I like reading, writing, philosophizing. Scheming. I've been doing some exploration of the inner space.

One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there.

I was always drawn to Broadway musicals, and obviously composers like Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin and Porter were writing music that I found wildly impressive.

Louis Pasteur said, 'Chance favors the prepared mind.' If you're really engaged in the writing, you'll work yourself out of whatever jam you find yourself in.

When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author.

Writing is hard work and bad for the health.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be very interesting to make a collection of some of the worst writing by good writers.

I don't really need to stand out, there's room for everyone. Although I haven't built a niche yet, I'm just writing love songs.

I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.

Those who write clearly have readers.

Writing music always happened for me in periods when I wasn't under the influence of mind-altering substance.

The process of writing a book is like the process of preparing a dinner. Serving dishes, choosing ingredients and so on.

But when I started writing songs, I stopped painting completely, and the only art things I do are connected to the career, like album sleeves and, to some extent, posters and things like that.

I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it.

When Rimbaud became a slave trader, he stopped writing poetry.

When I was writing songs, I always thought I'd make more of a career out of the drawings, the comics even more than the music.

Screenwriting is always about what people say or do, whereas good writing is about a thought process or an abstract image or an internal monologue, none of which works on screen.

Instead of growing old gracefully, at home with my family - reading and writing and praying and thinking - too much of my time has been spent at airports and in hotels.

I sort of was good at writing essays. I was never very good at mathematics, and I was never very good at algebra. I loved science, but I wasn't sure of it.

Sugar Ray and talked about doing some articles together or writing a book together but dealing with Sugar Ray was a lot like fighting him. He would fake you in and then he'd drop you.

I never think about a movie when I'm writing a book, because I think only two things could happen and both of them are bad. You write a lousy novel and a lousy film.

Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

Write while the heat is in you.

We were writing songs about girls when we still thought girls had cooties.

I think all good writing is a struggle. To write as well as you feel you can has to be a struggle, almost by definition, because you could always improve.

Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It's not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it's just like turning on the faucet. That's just the nature of it.

Heartbreak was the impetus to me writing poems and music in the first place.

Writing a book is incredibly pleasurable, but very solitary. You have total control, but sometimes that can drive you insane.

First of all, writing at best - certainly fiction writing - more and more I think is magic.

I don't have a special place or ritual for writing songs, basically I write songs whenever an idea hits me, in my hotel room, on the road, in the plane.

I think if I had been writing fiction, where the work is entirely dependent on the writer's creativity and the potential directions the narrative might take are infinite, I might have frozen

Never tell anyone that you're writing a book, going on a diet, exercising, taking a course, or quitting smoking. They'll encourage you to death.

Music for me is this thing that's sort of saved my life over the course of my whole life, whether it be writing songs or listening to other people's stuff.

Good writing is deceptive in that it hides its own artifice - it makes it seem easy.

I lost my voice. I'd never had to cancel a show before and I had to walk around with a pad and a pen, writing things down.

Good writing of course requires talent, and no one can teach you to have talent.

I instantly chucked my academic ambitions and began writing fiction full-time.