Writing Quotes

A lot of people talk about writing. The secret is to write, not talk.

Actually, when I write, there is a feeling of necessity, of something that is stronger than myself that demands that I must write as I write.

People think if you describe someone with glistening brown skin you're writing about race, as if the whole of the African diaspora is in someone's brown skin.

There is something terribly radical about believing that one's own experience and images are important enough to speak about, much less to write about and to perform

I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself.

I often start writing in order to excite an expansive emotion.

What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours.

Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.

All good plots come from well-orchestrated characters pitted against one another in a conflict of wills.

Life is a sheet of paper white / Whereon each one of us may write / His word or two, and then comes night.

What is the ultimate impulse to write? Because all this is going to vanish.

There'll come a writing phase where you have to defend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

I am never as clear about any matter as when I have finished writing about it.

An artist's career always begins tomorrow

That's the best advice I can give - when you're trying to write a comedy, first write a drama, and then make it funny.

Word meanings are like stretchy pullovers, whose outline contour is visible, but whose detailed shape varies with use.

A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.

Writing is putting one's obsessions in order.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

This desire [to write] is rather strange all the same and is not without a certain "cracked" quality.

My goal was, and still is, to write first, direct my own stuff whenever possible and control my own creative destiny.

We lie. That's what we do. You're selling me a line of bullshit and you want me to sell you a line of bullshit back so you can write a major line of bullshit and be paid for it.

My feeling about my own work is, I could be writing 'The Aeneid' and they would still have to call it chick lit or mommy lit or menopausal old hag lit.

Write what you care about. If you do that, you stand the best chance of doing your best writing.

People who keep journals have life twice

You never know what you'll want to write until it starts writing itself in your head.

Be a collector of good ideas. Keep a journal. If you hear a good idea, capture it, write it down. Don't trust your memory.

That to me is the way any good romantic would look at his life: Live it first, then write it down before you go.

I remember the excruciating school task of writing a three-page term paper. But, oh, that feeling when I was done! I think I drive myself for that feeling of accomplishment.

I do not worship the devil. But magic does intrigue me. Magic of all kinds. I bought Crowley's house to go up and write in. The thing is, I just never get up that way. Friends live there now.

The people who are making money are the ones who are writing and singing their own songs.

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.

What I do not want to write is didactic political tracts.

Writing is grunt work - you need to have self-motivation, perseverance, and faith... talent is the smallest part of it.

Song ideas have come to me in the middle of interviews, in the shower, or while I'm writing another song.

I am writing to apply for the position of bookkeeper. Attached, you will find my list of qualifications. I have been keeping books for four years now, and I am never going to give them back.

One must be ruthless with one's own writing or someone else will be.

I can play just about any keyboard but I can't read or write a note.

I believe that writing is an account of the powers of extrication.

Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater latitude for the ego.

Fiction must compete with first-rate reporting. If you cannot write a story that is equal to a factual account of battle in the streets or demonstrations, then you can't write a story.

Tension is wonderful for making people laugh.

This is what I love about novels - both reading them and writing them. They jump into the abyss to be with you where you are.

The historian ought to be an educated person, writing for other educated people about something which they don't know about, but wish to know about in a way that they can understand.

There are days when the result is so bad that no fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast, when I'm greatly inspired, only four revisions are needed.

In my opinion, understanding who your target audience is, and what they want, and writing to them (and only them!) is the most important component of being successful as an author.

I love pop music. It's not easy to write a good pop song.

Some directors expect you to do everything; write, be producer, psychiatrist. Some just want you to die in a tragic accident during the shooting so they can get the insurance.

I don't have to worry about any pop sensibility. I can write adult songs, and I don't have to worry about choruses and hook lines.