Writing Quotes

The image that fiction presents is purged of the distractions, confusions and accidents of ordinary life.

You don't find time to write. You make time. It's my job.

I would spend my time telling stories or writing them.

Who says one instance of writing has anything in common with another instance?

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

If you caricature friends in your first novel they will be upset, but if you don't they will feel betrayed.

It's always painful when you're writing memoirs because you've got to go through the dark places, but it gives you a chance to find out the person you really are, not the person you thought you were.

I write a story in my head. I see the story like a movie.

Mythology, science and space exploration are subjects that have fascinated me since my early childhood. And they were always connected somehow with the music I write.

Let us see whether it is the New Order or me who will be the loser before Indonesian history. I have won. The New Order has fallen and my writings have been translated into 40 languages.

Give me a paper and pen, so I can write about my life of sin. A couple of bottles of gin, in case I don't get in.

I didn't start out writing to give children hope, but I'm glad some of them found it.

Books are really, really hard to write. They represent a kind of a summit of grappling with what one really has to say

Write the poem only you can write.

One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language.

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

If you can write DNA, you're no longer limited to 'what is' but to what you could make.

the world I create in writing compensates for what the real world does not give me.

Anyone interested in language ends up writing about the sociological issues around it.

Such things and deeds as are not written down are covered with darkness, and given over to the sepulchre of oblivion.

Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.

There will never be another now - I'll make the most of today. There will never be another me - I'll make the most of myself.

Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen.

Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.

You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

Write a lot and hit the streets. A writer who doesn't keep up with what's out there ain't gonna be out there.

Good writing takes place at intersections, at what you might call knots, at places where the society is snarled or knotted up.

When the last dime is gone, I'll sit on the curb outside with a pencil and a ten cent notebook and start the whole thing over again.

Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.

One should write only those books from whose absence one suffers. In short: the ones you want on your own desk.

I used to write sonnets and various things, and moved from there into writing prose, which, incidentally, is a lot more interesting than poetry, including the rhythms of prose.

Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.

There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters.

I once considered writing a book called I'm not OK and you're not OK, and that's OK.

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

If I wrote you a love letter, would you write back?

The Bible is not such a book a man would write if he could, or could write if he would.

I am not really a writer. I am just someone who is haunted, and I will write the hauntings down.

I always make it a rule never to look back. Otherwise, I'd ask myself how I could write such piffle and live with myself, day after day.

Text is just ink on a page until a reader comes along and gives it life.

I write about what I know; and I write about things that are new to me, and that I didn't know before.

Top people have very clear goals. They know who they are and they know what they want. They write it down and they make plans for its accomplishment.

When talent fails, indignation writes the verse.

You need to get outside of your comfort zone to write songs that are interesting, songs that are compelling, songs that are different from what other people are writing.

Because to write, one must truly suffer.

People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.

If you start with a bang, you won't end with a whimper.