Writing Quotes

The condition of the world today is such that most writers feel they cannot truthfully be "comic" about it.

The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest.

Good traders trade. Good letter writers write letters.

The more you write tunes, the better they will become. The more you do gigs, the better you will become.

I'd like to produce, direct, write, score, and star in a film in exactly the way Chaplin did. I'll do that before I'm thirty.

Writers are the main landmarks of the past.

Initially I started writing because I felt like I didn't fit in. I just moved to a new school and I felt quite lonely. I think that's where it all started for me.

Miller didn't write Death of a Salesman. He released it. It was there inside him, waiting to be turned loose. That's the measure of its merit.

And as to experience-well, think how little some good poets have had, or how much some bad ones have.

The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.

What is being said is the effect of something that has happened; at the same time, what is being said is in itself something happening, which will, in turn, leave its effect.

Writing doesn't come easily to me. It gets more and more difficult.

The record of one's life must needs prove more interesting to him who writes it than to him who reads what has been written.

I'm not going to write for posterity. I'm going to write to make a buck.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.

Morrissey writes wonderful song titles, but sadly he often forgets to write the song.

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.

I am never going to write for the sake of writing.

I wish I gardened. I don't have a space for a garden. I'm in an apartment in New York but I do lots of stuff. I read and write and hang out with people. I go see movies.

I really want to write a novel. I also want to learn to play the mandolin.

I do not keep a diary. Never have. To write a diary every day is like returning to one's own vomit.

The writing of a melody is an emotional moment; success doesn't make it easy.

It's not enough to create magic. You have to create a price for magic, too. You have to create rules.

The creative mind is the playful mind. Philosophy is the play and dance of ideas.

Writing the book automatically made me accept myself and love myself more.

To write history is so difficult that most historians are forced to make concessions to the technique of legende.

All bad writers are in love with the epic.

There is no rule on how to write.

There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

Mediocrity is more dangerous in a critic than in a writer.

I wish I could write. I get these ideas but I never seem to be able to put them in words.

When I'm supposed to be writing I clean my apartment, take my clothes to the laundry, get organized, make lists, do the dishes. I would never do a dish unless I had to write.

I hate writing. I will do anything to avoid it. The only way I could write less was if I was dead.

A great deal of living must go to a very little writing.

I'm very proud of my flops, as much as of my successes.

When you make a decision to write according to a set schedule and really stick to it, you find yourself writing very fast. At least I do.

I'm a comic book artist. So I think to myself, what do I like to draw? I like to draw hot chicks, fast cars and cool guys in trench coat. So that's what I write about.

It's about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story and all kinds of sonic goodness.

I have never seen an experienced programmer who routinely made detailed flow charts before beginning to write programs.

If you are around a lot of human beings who are filled with jealousy and anger and rage and desire, it filters into the mind. Zen is writing a new program to run in the mind.

A story has been thought to its conclusion when it has taken its worst possible turn.

It hinders the creative work of the mind if the intellect examines too closely the ideas as they pour in.

Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books.

I don't necessarily write everything as automatically assuming it will be collected, there's nothing that says Hitman will be collected, though it might be.

Shakespeare doesn't really write subtext, you play the subtext.

I am writing about people who are alive in the city of New York during mid-20th-century America. And these people are like a character in a play or they are figures in a short story or a novel.

Sometimes I think my writing sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewriter running.

Mostly, you become a writer not because you want to get rich or famous, but because you have to write; because there is something inside that must come out.