Writing Quotes

I took acting lessons when I was 19, 20, and I had my writing.

It's a discovery of a story when I write a book, a case of inching ahead on each page and discovering what's beyond in the darkness, beyond where you're writing.

I don't have a plan for a story when I sit down to write. I would get quite bored carrying it out.

There's a lot of thievery involved in writing. You're breaking into other people's spaces and other people's stories.

I've always enjoyed writing, I graduated with a degree in English; I've done bits of journalism.

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.

So I write melodies - thirty, forty, fifty - then I cast them off until I have just two or three. If only one is needed, I go see the director and ask him to decide.

I used to go over to my friend's house and we'd watch VCR tapes, three of them a day, and I was like, "I could come up with better stories than this." And I've wanted to write films ever since.

I just loved storytelling. That's what I thought I would end up doing. I thought I would probably go to school and end up writing for a magazine or something.

There are too many people writing about whether they just farted or not.

A lot of times songs are very much of a moment, that you just encapsulate. They come to you, you write them, you feel good that day, or bad that day.

I play the piano a lot at home, I write songs on the piano and guitar. I would like to actually play piano on stage... I don't think I'll get the chance for a while.

Usually if you read a screenplay, no matter who's writing it, the bad guy is always written as a one-dimensional bad guy.

Writing is a great love of mine.

I start with the subject matter I want to write about. Then I make a musical base for that and create an atmosphere with the music. Once I've done that, the lyrics come last.

When I was a boy, my parents were writers and they owned a bookstore, 'The Complete Traveler in New York,' so writing and books have held special places in my heart all my life.

We writers have this saying 'Kill your darlings'... but I suppose you family men don't agree with it.

From what I understand about Shakespeare - which isn't a lot - there was no copyright law when he was writing. He sampled at will, and it wasn't seen as a bad thing.

From the reader's point of view, punctuation provides a map for one who must otherwise drive blindly past the by-ways, intersections, and detours of a writer's thought.

Anyone who has that weird volition to become an actor probably has a weird volition to do lots of other creative things - to write, to play music, to paint, to cook.

My first love is writing and producing. So I sometimes put my own stuff off to work on other people's projects.

A writer writes what he knows, in ways that are natural to him.

Anyone may be an honorable man, and yet write verse badly.

I never sit down and write. I just sorta let things form in my brain.

I don't claim anything of the work. It is his work. I am like a little pencil in his hand. That is all. He does the thinking. He does the writing. The pencil has nothing to do with it.

Did you ever find that there is room between the two opposing rules of a paradox? That space between two almost opposite rules is the ground where I play and write.

I think in a couple of weeks, the question of all these bad write-offs will be behind us because everybody is going to throw in the towel on bad accounting.

I try to be upbeat. I read this book which tells you to write down everything that you're grateful for each day. Now I'm constantly noticing all the little things that make me joyful.

I am free to write the worst junk in the world.

The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world.

I would say I'd rather dig a ditch, you know, do hard, manual labor than write lyrics.

Lyrics are so important, I hate every second of writing them, but it's something I take great pride in when it's finished.

One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry.

Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens and wallflowers need ruin to make them grow.

Do not write a check with your tongue that your actions cannot cash.

The new spirituality will bring about what I'm calling the 'end of better.' And that is in fact what is called for in the next of the series of books that I've been writing.

I don't feel I have to write deep and meaningful songs; they can be light and meaningless. It has to do with the place I am in my life, a really good place.

Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.

I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work.

Writing is flying in dreams. When you remember. When you can. When it works. It's that easy.

I wanted to write something that would be a comedy in the sense of making people feel happier when they finish it than they did when began it.

I learned to write by writing.

I have always been quite careful when I have been approached to do a television project to have the option of writing the accompanying book.

I'd say it's never a challenge to present white and heteronormative privilege. The hard thing is to write any other way.

I used the pen name because I knew I wanted to write better novels under my own name someday.

While drinking, while talking, while writing, while watering our garden, it's always possible to practice living in the here and the now.

The fact that people will pay you to talk to people and travel to interesting places and write about what intrigues you, I am just amazed by that.

I love you now as I write this, and I love you now as you read this

Focus in on the genre you want to write, and read books in that genre. A LOT of books by a variety of authors. And read with questions in your mind.