Writing Quotes

[On culture] It's living the core values when you hire; when you write an email; when you are working on a project; when you are walking in the hall.

To hell with facts! We need stories.

Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written.

I don't really write jokes. I wait for stuff to happen in life, and then I tell it on stage.

As I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time are those who have given me something to say.

I write to reach people's common sense and intelligence, to show them that if they unite they can make a different world possible.

There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.

At the end of the day, we have to write music that makes us happy and the day that we stop loving what we do…we’ll quit.

A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.

I do have fun writing, and a long time ago, I told myself, 'You got to have fun at this, or it'll drive you nuts.'

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.

My dream writing room would be the Imperial Library in Vienna.

There is no such thing as a secure writer: every novel is an impossible mountain.

I don't think of myself as an illustrator. I think of myself as a cartoonist. I write the story with pictures - I don't illustrate the story with the pictures.

Once we choose hope, everything is possible.

You don't just go to the studio and say, 'I'm going to write a hit.' It becomes a hit when people like your compositions.

Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality.

Songwriting is Hell on Earth. If it isn't, then you're doing it wrong.

A man coined to superlative must expect that his every statement will be taken with some caution

There is one fact that can be established. The only phenomenon which, always and in all parts of the world, seems to be linked with the appearance of writing

Writing means revealing oneself to excess.

When I write a song, I tap into the emotion and the feeling and then I use the emotion to write the words. It's the opposite when I act. I use the words and tap into the emotion.

The first step in blogging is not writing them but reading them.

I must write. If I stop writing my life will have been an abject failure. It is that already to other people. But it could be an abject failure to myself. I will not have earned death.

If we had to say what writing is, we would have to define it essentially as an act of courage.

Remember technology does not make good work. You can still write a poem on a brown paper bag, and haiku is just as profound as the pyramids.

Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.

Unfortunately many young writers are more concerned with fame than with their own work... It's much more important to write than to be written about.

I write a lot in my head. The revision goes on internally. It's not spontaneous and it doesn't have a schedule.

One must write poetry in such as way that if one threw the poem in a window, the pane would break.

You have to write a good score that you feel good about. At least, you're supposed to. But, if the director hates it, it ain't going to be in the movie!

Whatever you have a passion for, then you must do. If you want to write, write about something you know about.

The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them.

I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses our society, and if we do not stop being violent we have no future.

It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience.

There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing.

Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.

An editor should have a pimp for a brother so he'd have someone to look up to.

Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.

Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move…similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle.

My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel.

Other-Love is writing's first name.

You write your life story by the choices you make. You never know if they have been a mistake. Those moments of decision are so difficult.

I began to write because I was too shy to talk, and too lonely not to send messages.

If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.

Having decided to follow my own intuitive path I began to write music on the basis of harmonized spoken words, for new instruments and in new scales.

I don't give a damn what other people think. It's entirely their own business. I'm not writing for other people.