Writing Quotes

I write when something sticks in my craw. Writing is a compulsion — or an itch.

'Thank you power' is writing down the moments that are good in your life so that you can go back and reflect on them - so you've got this sort of repository of good stuff in your past.

Far more thought and care go into the composition of any prominent ad in a newspaper or magazine than go into the writing of their features and editorials.

He who writes distichs, wishes, I suppose, to please by brevity. But, tell me, of what avail is their brevity, when there is a whose book full of them?

When I write love songs, people think they're really soppy - but I see love as a consolation for the boredom of life.

Writing is a demanding profession and a selfish one. And because it is selfish and demanding, because it is compulsive and exacting, I didn't embrace it. I succumbed to it.

Richmond has fallen - and I have no heart to write about it... They are too many for us. Everything lost in Richmond, even our archives. Blue-black is our horizon.

A frozen river is not a dry one, it's just a still river on the surface but is still moving, and so am my winter writing.

To write or speak is to communicate. To communicate is to share meanings, make them ‘common’ to all participants in the discourse. (The etymological root of communication means ‘common.’)

To George Gershwin, on refusinghim as a pupil: You would only lose the spontaneous quality of your melody, and end by writing bad Ravel.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine ... before she realizes she's reading.

Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it.

The expression to write something down suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.

For me they go hand in hand. When I travel it makes me want to write, when I read it makes me want to travel.

Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.

Writing is work, but it's also a compulsion, and once you get your characters on paper, you can't abandon them. You have to respond to them.

I went into journalism to learn the craft of writing and to get close to the world I wanted to write about - police and criminals, the criminal justice system.

I write songs about things that I'm simultaneously trying not to think about.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages.

All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.

What do you want from me? Fine writing? Or do you want to see the sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?

Do not write merely to be understood. Write so you cannot possibly be misunderstood.

When I write, I try to represent the ordinary person in the pew, which means that, ironically, I'm qualified to write about prayer by being unqualified!

I want to write a novel about Silence," he said; “the things people don’t say.

All worthwhile writing... comes from an individual vision, privately pursued.

Ability is nothing without opportunity.

Women have seen that they have locked themselves up with feminist writing.

One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.

When my second husband shouted, 'Me or your writing!' I replied, 'My writing.' We separated.

I felt a little green, because Shakespeare writes the thought process within the text; it was tricky not to think of what to say and then say it, and instead just deliver the lines.

I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.

I loathe writing. On the other hand I'm a great believer in money.

In Lebanon, it's never over for anyone. You cannot write off anyone or anything in this country.

I'm a believer. I don't go to church. I don't belong to any particular religion, but I do believe in God. I couldn't write what I write about and be creative without a certain form of belief.

My life feels, week to week, incomplete to the level of being pointless if I am not in preparation for the next play or, ideally, into it.

I had no idea that he was going to write that, but I've always believed that insecurity was what would keep you always in your innocence, no matter what the business did.

All those who actually live the mysteries of life haven't the time to write, and all those who have the time don't live them! D'you see?

Nobody can tell you you're wrong for writing a song about how you feel - even if you don't really feel that way.

I think everyone should sit down and write a book. It's a lot like therapy but a lot less expensive.

I like writing because you can make things happen and turn out the way they never do in real life.

That's the life really isn't it? You write. You record. You play. And it never grows old.

It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.

In our age, if a boy or girl is untalented, the odds are in favor of their thinking they want to write.

I've heard writers talk about "discovering a voice," but for me that wasn't a problem. There were so many voices that I didn't know where to start.

There's nothing wrong with delighting in what you do. In fact, most of the fun you'll have as a poet will come about during the process of writing.

If I could give you one line about writing worship songs, it would be ‘Sing your prayers.’

I must be free... free to do what I like, say what I like, write what I like, within the limits prescribed for me by my own sense of what is seemly and fitting.

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.