Writing Quotes

But when you get to a song, not only do you have to do a vocal melody, you have to write words and not be redundant and make some semblance of a story

The act of writing is the act of making soul, alchemy.

I write in the morning at a table, longhand on yellow legal pads, just like Nixon, when I’m doing fiction.

A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships.

When I write, I enjoy myself so much that what is being written really needs no reader

No, absolutely not, writing doesn't have to be like a jigsaw puzzle, it can be a very linear undertaking.

It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down.

I don't much believe in the idea of characters. I write with words, that is all. Whether those words are put in the mouth of this or that character does not matter to me

Read the sacred writings of all the peoples on Earth. Through all of them runs, like a red thread, the hidden Science of attaining and maintaining wakefulness.

Just start scribbling. The first draft is never your last draft. Nothing you write is by accident.

Writing books is certainly a most unpleasant occupation. It is lonesome, unsanitary, and maddening. Many authors go crazy.

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

I usually say I write for the smartest, cleverest, wittiest audience I know, and that's me.

Get a day job, make your money from that, and write to please yourself.

I asked Ring Lardner the other day how he writes his short stories, and he said he wrote a few widely separated words or phrases on a piece of paper and then went back and filled in the spaces.

When I was confronted with official tuition, the academic thing, I could see no relationship whatever between that and the music I'd been writing since I was 11.

I'll write to you. A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel

I love to write quartets. One could say that this is a mania.

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

It's rather fun writing a female spy, because she has so much more kit. Bond never carried a hair dryer or a makeup bag. And he certainly didn't wear an uplift bra.

I don't want to live in a hand -me -down world of others' experiences. I want to write about me, my discoveries, my fears, my feelings, about me.

Work on one thing at a time until finished.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions.

I'd rather sit down and write a letter than call someone up. I hate the telephone.

Write a page a day. It will add up.

If you can describe clearly without a diagram the proper way of making this or that knot, then you are a master of the English language.

'Show up at the desk' is one of the first rules of writing, but for 'Wolf Hall' I was about 30 years late.

Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold.

Writing is like the relationship with your bowels. First you can, then you can't. Finally, you must. Only then should you reach for the paper.

When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats.

Yes, I did lock myself in my room for about two years and write some songs and things like that. But I don't feel like I missed out on a whole lot.

I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me

As a friendly one. I would still like to write concrete poems, but I can only do it sometimes.

The hardest period for a writer is the period in-between writing. That's when you can go crazy if you don't allow the creative juices to flow.

No one can ever write about anything that happened to him after he was twelve years old.

My grand plan is that I can master having a better life by making sure I have a regular flow of songs. Then I can give myself time to tour or celebrate or write a film score.

Your first duty as a writer is to write to please yourself. And you have no duty towards anyone else.

[On writing biography:] If you wish to see a person you must not start by seeing through him.

I like writing in an illustrative, descriptive way. I prefer describing to rather than explaining.

Basically, particularly in Britain, it's a hegemonic thing that people who write tend to come from the leisure classes. They can afford the time and the books.

Every novelist has a different purpose-and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.

From my close observation of writers... they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

Unfortunately, in many cases, people who write science fiction violate the laws of nature, not because they want to make a point, but because they don't know what the laws of nature are.

If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.

I wanted to write a battle song for the Judeans but so far I can think of nothing noble and weighty enough

Writing is a process, a journey into memory and the soul.

I write to understand my circumstances, to sort out the confusion of reality, to exorcise my demons. But most of all, I write because I love it!

The first few months of my life of every year are in total retreat. I don't see anybody except my husband and my dog, I don't talk to anybody, and I just write.