Writing Quotes

There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!

A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

The true poem rests between the words.

Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?

The problem is when you are writing something in retrospective, it needs a lot of courage not to change, or you will forget a certain reality, and you will just take in consideration your view today.

And if you don't live, you have nothing to write about.

It wasn't until I was 37 that I grasped the great truth that you've got to write your own books and nobody else's, and then everything followed from there.

If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.

I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of brushes like quail before gunshot.

So what? All writers are lunatics!

The reality of a serious writer is a reality of many voices, some of them belonging to the writer, some of them belonging to the world of readers at large.

When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.

When I decide to write a story, I don't think too much about what I want it to be, I just let things come naturally and this is how it turns out. It's just how my subconscious works.

My writing is very organic. It's what I am. My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig. So I think of it as something that's very essential to my being.

A publisher who writes is like a cow in a milk bar.

Writing good editorials is chiefly telling the people what they think, not what you think.

When it came to writing about wine, I did what almost everybody does - faked it

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression - all of that is very important.

For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent.

In general, what is written must be easy to read and easy to speak; which is the same.

I try to write my own music. It's a good way of de-stressing.

I like to write and draw everything with sharpies. I even got one with my own name on it!

I think a lot of people are so scared of failure that they don't put everything they have into whatever they want to do. I think, in turn, they write their own destiny.

When you have finished analyzing all the variations and gone along all the branches of the tree of analysis you must first of all write the move down on your score sheet, before you play it.

It's easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.

I refuse to see literature as amusement, as a game. I think that you ought not to approach literature without a moral responsibility for every word you write.

I confess I seldom commune with my conscience when I write.

This at least should be a rule through the letter-writing world: that no angry letter be posted till four-and-twenty hours will have elapsed since it was written.

If you want to be a psychological novelist and write about human beings, the best thing you can do is keep a pair of cats.

In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories.

A society can exist - many do exist - without writing, but no society can exist without reading.

We [writers] must know that we can never escape the common misery and that our only justification, if indeed there is a justification, is to speak up, insofar as we can, for those who cannot do so.

I sometimes need to write things which I cannot completely control but which therefore prove that what is in me is stronger than I am.

The writer's life seethes within but not without.

A lot of times when songwriters get together and write a song... somebody will come in with a hook and a lot of times they come out with something that sounds a little crafty.

He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, for that is what he will know.

Once an interesting idea or theme occurs to me then I would want to write a poem about it. The rest, frankly, is not difficult.

It's true that writing is a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.

Once your mind is caught on the right snag, there's nothing so hard about the mechanics of writing.

The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning

Reading any piece of writing aloud is an acid test, particularly when it comes to dialogue. There were writers I'd always admired who suddenly rang false when I spoke their words in our living room.

I don't know if you actually get something out of writing poetry. I think poetry is an autonomous muse that decides to come and sit on your couch.

My biggest dream from the beginning - besides Evanescence - is scoring film and writing music for film.

Only bad writers think that their work is really good.

We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.

The drumming helps a lot when I'm producing songs or writing songs. My knowledge of drums helps more in that aspect, (although) I don't know, man; I'm not great at any of them.

Writing fiction, there are no limits to what you write as long as it increases the value of the paper you are writing on.

We always feel pretty creative as far as writing songs. We write them together; we just get in a room, or on occasion in Flea's garage. We just sort of improvise, like jazz musicians.

Manipulating shadows and tonality is like writing music or a poem.