Writing Quotes

Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a difficult, lonely job; it's like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There's plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.

Writing is like a little hole in reality that you can go through and you can get out and you can be someplace else for a while.

There's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all.

I started to submit when I was twelve, and obviously at that time they weren't good enough, and I suppose in my heart of hearts I knew it. But you have to start sooner or later, you have to dig in.

Writers write. That's all it is. It is as simple, and as complex, as that.

...for the first time in my life, writing was hard. The problem was the teaching...by most Friday afternoons I felt as if I'd spent the week with jumper cables clamped to my brain.

You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.

I'm seen as somebody who writes for adults because I'm an older man myself. Some of them find me, and a lot of them don't.

I'm afraid of all kinds of things. I'm afraid of failing at whatever story I'm writing - that it won't come up for me, or that I won't be able to finish it.

I don't really map anything out. I just let it happen [while writing]. But once it happens, it's always there. If it's laid, it's played. If I get to page 300 and it's not working, I junk it.

I identify with the characters very closely. At the same time that I'm outside, writing, I'm also inside, experiencing, and it can be very unsettling.

I started writing seriously when I was about 12. I am always in the mood.

I'd like to learn French well enough to write in that language.

Writing is like being in a dream state or under self-directed hypnosis. It induces a state of recall that - while not perfect - is pretty spooky.

I think it is harder to write a story that appeals to the intellect. But, when you tie onto one, you can do it quite deeply. It really depends on the type of idea you have to begin with.

Hemingway sucks. If I set out to write that way, it would have been been hollow and lifeless because it wasn't me.

I wanted to write a balls-to-the-wall supernatural horror story, something I haven't done in a long time.

I find it hard to think of myself as selling books. I don't even have a Web site. I want to sit and write, not sell.

Acting can be a very reactive profession. Acting is a fantastic thing, and it's my life, but writing is also part of me too, so I did it and in so doing took responsibility for my own life.

Which isn't the truth, you understand. At least you understand that in your head...but not always in your heart.

The best I do, if I'm just playing around and riffing in a fantasy world, and then I'll write something down. Hopefully I write it down.

I did some writing. I was just taking the kids to school. I did a couple things and we did some tours. It was a lot of downtime.

I've lost my writing skills since college. I couldn't write a book. It would take a long time.

I don't aspire to direct like many actors. I would aspire most likely to do some writing, but I haven't had a chance to do that.

I don't know how much a photograph can add to a biography, the way a film or writing or narrative medium could. Because it's a frozen image.

Everyone would like to be on Broadway, cause if a show works, you make a great deal of money and it allows you to write other shows.

By the time I get through writing a score, I know the book better than the book writer does, because I've examined every word, and questioned the book writer on every word.

Sometimes I'll ask the book writer to write a monologue, not to be performed, just as if they were notes for the character.

When you know your cast well and their strengths and weaknesses, you can start writing for them, just the way Shakespeare wrote for his actors.

I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.

I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.

Sometimes when I am writing, I am aware of a rhythm, a dance, a fury, which is as yet empty of words.

Basically when I'm walking I'm not consciously writing or intending anything. In the manner I have learned from meditation practice, I let things unfold.

When my own writing needs a perk, I open Zukofsky and read from "A" - particularly sections "22" and "23." It can be opaque, but I love the intensity.

There's nothing compared to the history of writing about the city of New York that you get, say, in Charles Reznikoff.

I do think that the kind of writing that I do will always be around and printed in books, magazines, and now blogs.

Few people have written significant books about San Francisco. Robert Duncan was, in my opinion, often in the clouds. If he walked the streets a lot he didn't write about as such.

I think a blog is a catalyst for a number of possible kinds of writing besides being its own medium.

A phrase may come to me as I am walking, and, once I write it down in my journal, the rest of the poem will unravel from that catalyst.

When I write a story, it's not like I'm thinking about what I'm doing

I know the exact date that I began writing Twilight, because it was also the first day of swim lessons for my kids. So I can say with certainty that it all started on June 2, 2003.

There's already a great deal to do writing the songs. And if I were completely in control of it, nobody would be able to say "this song doesn't work."

Planning is the mother of almost every other ability. Make your plan and set a timetable for its accomplishment in writing.

I've been involved in burlesque for a really long time and I've always been really interested in burlesque, and I was writing musicals for different studios.

Only our company and a handful of others are poised to write the future.

Anything you write, even if you have to start over, is valuable. I let the story write itself through the characters.

I never had any master plan about directing, and I don't really write.

E-mail also changed things in that you don't have to write a full document to discuss something. You can just send an e-mail to a list.

The nature of the writing and the nature of the animation meant that it had to be short.

I wasn't raised to not write about issues, and I'm just living in really politically charged times. You know, I'd rather write songs about girls, but it's just hard to do right now.