Writing Quotes

Just because I'm playing jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me, the way I feel, through jazz, or whatever.

What do you think happens to a composer who is sincere and loves to write and has to wait thirty years to have someone play a piece of his music?

I'm trying my hand at writing. I'm writing a couple of projects for HBO, a half hour comedy and a miniseries.

In the U.K. I'm probably better known as a comedy writer - or certainly that's my background is in writing comedy.

Lie. Put down on paper the most interesting lies you can imagine. . .and then make them plausible.

We never let go. Ever. Even with punctuation. It's frightening. I can't see anyone from any record company ever writing an email to Neil and not getting it back, with corrections.

Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.

Whether it's string writing or whatever, I try to write for what each instrumentalist can do best.

Real writers write because they love to write. They don't write for public acclaim.

It seems that so much writing is being done in the nineteenth-century model, where every connection has to be thoroughly explained.

Remember: a story is not a vignette. It has a beginning, middle and an end. It is not merely a snapshot in time.

No generality has any weight whatever. It is like saying "how do you do?" When you have no intention of inquiring about ones health. But specific claims when made in print are taken at their value

One may gain attention by wearing a fools cap. But he would ruin his selling prospects

As a kid, I said, 'I want to write for movies.' When I finally had that opportunity it was like I was able to exhale. 'Wow, I'm finally doing this for real.

I don't have the notion that everybody has to write in some single academic style

Mr. Faulkner, of course, is interested in making your mind rather than your flesh creep.

Writing is a creative art form and the acting and directing is more of an interpretive art form.

When you write a song, the goal is not to convey the details of your life. You should write a memoir or something if that's what you're going to do.

Whereas to write, all you need is paper and an idea, so I felt that writing might be my stepping stone.

I don't really have special rituals, but I don't try to write fiction unless I have a minimum of a few hours. For me, it takes a while to settle into a mode where I'm truly concentrating

That's what it is every time you walk into the room to write with someone new. It's like, oh god I have to take my clothes off 'my creative clothes' and let them see all of my flaws.

Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.

I hold that the parentheses are by far the most important parts of a non-business letter.

Be a famous musician. Be a famous act or. Be a famous write r. Be a famous basketball player. Be famous.

Science fiction is what I point at when I say science fiction.

I make no distinction between writing and storytelling; I've always wanted to tell stories.

Fans are really important for me. And if they take pains to write me, it's the minimum that I answer myself.

Here was the freedom I desired, long sought-for, not yet known Freedom to write, to walk, to wander, freedom to climb hills, to pull a boat, to be alone.

Do not be grand. Try to get the ordinary into your writing - breakfast tables rather than the solar system; Middletown today, not Mankind through the ages.

'I need milk' and 'I need to decide whether to buy this company' both tie up space in psychic RAM. The solution is simple. Write it down. Look at it. Do it or say to yourself 'not now'.

It's odd but even when I was a kid, I would write about 'old and other times' as though I had a lot of years behind me. Now I do, so there is a difference in the weight of memory.

I love writing. I don't claim to be great at it. Occasionally I get a good sentence off. But I love the activity.

I began like all composers, writing for small groups. Chamber groups.

It looks like you can write a minimalist piece without much bleeding. And you can. But not a good one.

Get into the scene late; get out of the scene early.

I had been writing for about twelve years. I knew pretty well how you could find things out, but I had never been trained in an academic way how to go about the research.

I make two movies a year to take care of the butcher and the baker and the school fees. Then I try to write, but it's not that easy. Acting is what's easy.

I got put on jury duty, which is where I learned how to write.

People who think well, write well

I sort of kept my hand in writing and went to work for the Sierra Club in '52, walked the plank there in '69, founded Friends of the Earth and the League of Conservation Voters after that.

We should put pressure on power and write the truth and write relentlessly and fearlessly. That's the job.

The only real advice you can give anyone is to keep writing.

Everything I write, I believe instinctively, is to some extent collage. Meaning, ultimately, is a matter of adjacent data.

I think my books are better than my exhibitions. If people don't like my books then I don't mind. I guess you like them enough to write an essay about them so that makes me pretty happy.

A novel is like a gland pill - it nips off the cream of my hysterics and gets them running on track in a book where they belong instead of rioting all over my person.

When they write about real stuff like my custody battle, that's no fun. Some things have leaked out about accusations that have gone back and forth and that's just mean. It's a tactic.

I love the freedom of writing and then I love the realization of directing. I can't favor one or the other. I enjoy both parts of the process.

I used to like writing for comedians - I enjoyed the challenge of making other people funny.

It's good not only to realize that you can't please all of the people all of the time, but that you don't want to. There's a certain type of reader that you don't ever want to write for.

The trick to writing for people is, you have to be able to turn them on in your head. And know how they'd word something or how they'd inflect it.