Writing Quotes

If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.

Write, write, write-till your fingers break.

I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.

Personally, I do not believe that it is the duty of any man or woman to write a novel. In nine cases out of ten, there would be greater merit in leaving it unwritten.

Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.

But then, that's the beauty of writing stories-each one is an exploratory journey in search of a reason and a shape. And when you find that reason and that shape, there's no feeling like it.

So far as good writing goes, the use of the exclamation mark is a sign of failure. It is the literary equivalent of a man holding up a card reading LAUGHTER to a studio audience.

Because good writing in a TV cartoon is so rare, I think the animation on The Simpsons is often overlooked.

I became a copy boy. Not for long. I started writing stories.

Playing a flute is like writing a book. You're telling what's in your heart...It's easier to play if it's right from your heart. You get the tone, and the fingers will follow.

Keep writing. Try to do a little bit every day, even if the result looks like crap. Getting from page four to page five is more important than spending three weeks getting page four perfect.

Writing is not chewing your nails and picking your teeth, but a matter of public interest.

I wrote to find beauty and purpose, to know that love is possible and lasting and real.... Once I got to my desk, once I started writing, I still believed anything was possible.

I write not only what I want to read...I write all the things I should have been able to read.

The writing is hard, and the drawing is fun. It's very satisfying to see a drawing start to come together.

When it comes to giving advice, never do so unless you've first received a request in writing, signed by a lawyer.

As Bertrand Russell once wrote, two plus two is four even in the interior of the sun.

The first four months of writing the book, my mental image is scratching with my hands through granite. My other image is pushing a train up the mountain, and it's icy, and I'm in bare feet.

Writing is one of the few careers for which you essentially train yourself, the other two major ones being juggling and pickpocketing.

I don't have any desire to retire in the sense of not doing anything. Because as long as the Lord gives me strength I want to keep writing and keep preaching. I love what I do.

I do not think you should read about writing while you are writing.

When you write songs, you have to like them yourself first, but then you have to make everyone else like them, because you can force them to play it, but you can't force them to like it.

I usually write from the rhythm section...If a drummer got a funky beat on some things - like a half-shuffle or a shuffle or a backbeat that's even - I can write something.

I don’t like writing for comedians. I like writing for actors. The best comedians are the best actors.

When I was young, I knew William Burroughs really well. And William's secret desire, which he never quite did, was to write a straightforward detective novel.

The more you write, the more you're capable of writing.

You write who you are. But you also cheat, and youwrite what you want to be. It's embarrasing to be the guy who madethe movie, knowing you're not exactly who you want to be.

Idol has pretty much taken me out of my recording and out of my choreography. I have managed to slip in some choreography jobs. And I've been writing songs for other artists.

If you don't want anyone to know anything about you, don't write anything.

The question for writing then is this: how long are you willing to be unheard?

Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.

Every serious man in dealing with really serious subjects carefully avoids writing. ... There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any writing of mine dealing with this subject.

I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.

Prune what is turgid, elevate what is commonplace, arrange what is disorderly, introduce rhythm where the language is harsh, modify where it is too absolute.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

I want people to notice my writing abilities are real and that I'm not just stuck in one situation.

Plasma on the wall/Write my name on your heart like I'm Lucille Ball/But love changes, a thug changes/And best friends become strangers

If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy or both-you must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

Anyone can express himself or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate.

I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.

The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.

Easy writing's curst hard reading.

GNU, which stands for Gnu's Not Unix, is the name for the complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free to everyone who can use it.

Writing is like a sport - you only get better if you practice

It seems a pity, but I do not think that I can write more. For God's sake look after our people.

Nothing flatters me more than to have it assumed that I could write prose, unless it be to have it assumed that I once pitched a baseball with distinction.

I think my writing is part of my ministry.

I am not here [in the sanitarium] to write, but to be mad.

I try to sit down at the typewriter four times a day, even if it's only five minutes, and write three sentences.