Writing Quotes

When you write something it has to hit the level that you accept as being good.

The key thing is, don't worry about if anyone is reading you or not. Figure out your voice and figure out what you want to write about, what you're good at, what you like doing.

I write a song to be recorded. And to some extent to be performed, but definitely more to be recorded than performed, because the recording will last longer than a performance.

It's good when someone says, "Would you write a song for this purpose," or "would you record a song for this purpose," or "would you help me realize this song," again, for this purpose.

I love words but I don't like strange ones. You don't understand them and they don't understand you. Old words is like old friends, you know 'em the minute you see 'em.

In an idealized world, we would all be able to do what our English teachers told us to do, which is to write beautiful prose where enthusiasm is conveyed by word choice and grammar.

I prefer to write first drafts as soon as possible after waking, so that the oneiric inscape is still present to me.

Live life and write about life. Of the making of many books there is indeed no end, but there are more than enough books about books.

As for critical writing about modernism, its moments of lucidity are but fulgurations illuminating the dark and incomprehensible landscape of its subject's unabashed difficulty.

I write because I feel driven to write. I write from a sense of inner necessity. I don't write for anything other than that.

I always wanted to write fiction. Always. As far back as I can remember it's been integral to my sense of myself - everything else was always a displacement activity.

I'm very happy for whatever plaudits might come the way of my work, but I never ever sit down to write x with y in view - whether it's a reader, a prize or a sale.

The great thing about revision is that it's your opportunity to fake being brilliant.

Unless you're writing for a humorous effect, elves or space aliens and all creatures who aren't human should at least be as strange as, oh, the French.

Hurry up and write your number down before I don't want it no more.

Your vivid, exciting companionship in the office must not be your audience, you must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.

I don't want anyone reading my writing to think about style. I just want them to be in the story.

When you write, you can hide behind your words. When you talk, you are up front, like the clown in the midway booth; and passersby can bean you with a ball.

The word 'definition' has come to have a dangerously reassuring sound, owing no doubt to its frequent occurrence in logical and mathematical writings.

I'm not bashing people who write songs that are just 'get on the dance floor and party party', I understand why people need those songs too, but I don't really write lyrics like that.

I write songs so that people can make them into what it means to them as well.

Our words must seem to be inevitable.

Those men that in their writings are most wise Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.

No man, even though he be Shakespeare, can write perfectly when his web is woven of threads that have been spun in many lands.

Everyone can collect quotes, it's a bit different to write 10,000 original ones.

If you haven't got an idea, write a story anyway.

I have never been one to write by rule, not even by my own rules.

I'll write whatever I damn please, whenever I damn please and as I damn please and it'll be good if the authentic spirit of change is on it.

He who writes badly thinks badly

O ay, letters - I had letters - I am persecuted with letters - I hate letters - nobody knows how to write letters; and yet one has 'em, one does not know why - they serve one to pin up one's hair.

Fierce invectives against women form a conspicuous and grotesque portion of the writings of the Church fathers.

I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it.

It's the most satisfying occupation man has discovered yet, because you never can quite do it as well as you want to, so there's always something to wake up tomorrow morning to do.

That's a very good way to learn the craft of writing - from reading.

Everything characters say or do is a clue to their personalities, their histories, and the forces that motivate them.

I don't always like writing, but I very much like having written.

I don't begin a novel with a shopping list - the novel becomes my shopping list as I write it.

I started writing short fiction very briefly, as I imagine is the case for some novelists.

I've been interested in autism since I've known about it, which is more or less since I've been writing.

Maybe half a dozen think they are a community, but, in general terms, I think English writers tend to face outwards, away from each other, and write in their own patch, as it were.

I'm not a critic so much of my own writing. People must make up their own minds over that.

The easiest thing to do on earth is not write…But this is life on earth, you can't have everything.

When I write, I love finding connections between ideas. When the connections are plentiful and strong, then I know it's a pretty good subject to write about.

I publish a piece in order to kill it, so that I won't have to fool around with it any longer.

I love making movies, I love the differentness of it, I love writing. But I've always liked television. I grew up on television.

Writers love to write those idiotic, long stage directions, and some of them worse than others. They have nothing to do with the movie. They're just jerking around.

I'm really proud of the writing on Door to Door, and I think that's the Emmy that meant the most - the writing.

I gave up lots of things I love doing: writing, and business, and playing the piano and so on.

It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.

To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous; or even if he did you would find fault with him as a pedant.