Writing Quotes

The only rule I have found to have any validity in writing is not to bore yourself.

Becoming the reader is the essence of becoming a writer.

I can almost always write music; at any hour of the twenty-four, if I put pencil to paper, music comes.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page a day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

A creative person has to be alive. He can't borrow from things he's done in the past. He can't let his method choose his subjects or his characters. They can't be warped to fit his style.

When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.

I write about what interests me. It's very dangerous when you try to satisfy an audience.

I genuinely find it difficult to think of places that I'd never want to see again. It might be because part of my career has been concerned with writing about topography.

What a writer wants to do is not what he does.

If you don't write your books, nobody else will do it for you. No one else has lived your life.

I do not just write, I write what I am. If there is a secret, perhaps that is it.

Persecution mania is still around. In your writing, in your exchanges with people, meeting people who are in Russian affairs, Russian literature, etcetera.

Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off.

For me writing is foremost a mode of thinking and when it works well, an act of discovery

Before you use a fancy word, make room for it.

The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of its behind.

You must become an expert on a product, service or anything you write about to really be effective.

Why does the writer write? The writer writes to serve--hopeless ly he writes in the hope that he might serve--not himself and not others, but that great cold elemental grace that knows us.

It's very hard to be an experimental woman writer. If I had been writing under a pseudonym, just initials, I might have a different reputation - but, then I couldn't be myself either.

Every joke is an experiment. When you sit, alone, and write a script, or just a joke, you really have no idea if it will succeed.

The best books come from someplace inside. You don't write because you want to, but because you have to.

I'm a rewriter. That's the part I like best . . . once I have a pile of paper to work with, it's like having the pieces of a puzzle. I just have to put the pieces together to make a picture.

When I write a play, my whole intent at bottom is to get the audience to be in the cast, to get that audience on stage with the actors and to get them thoroughly involved in what's going on.

Style is to forget all styles.

The intricacy of plotting a thriller is akin to writing formal poetry.

People write to me and say, 'I'm giving up, you're not talking to me.' I just write them a simple message like, 'Never give up,' you know? And it changes their life.

Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed.

An idea's birth is legitimate if one has the feeling that one is catching oneself plagiarizing oneself.

The strange thing about writing is that it's so easy to write a novel. It is really easy. But it's getting there to the point where it's easy that's hard. The hard part is to get there.

When I'm writing I've been playing something for a couple of hours and I'm almost in a trance. At two or three in the morning you can actually see bits inspiration floating about and grab them.

I hate it, it is tedious... when I write for my act, it is very improvisational, I write bullet points, I cannot sit in front of a computer; that is not my style.

Art is the last thing I'm worried about when I'm writing a song. As far as I'm concerned, art is just short for 'Arthur.'

Young writers need to be encouraged to write - just write - with no restrictions on form, style or content.

By then The Kite Runner had become quite successful and I found myself in a position that I had always dreamed of my whole life, which was to write for a living.

I have all these revelations as I'm writing. Each song is like a chapter of my diary.

Money's really - you know, song writing, yes, there's money to be made and things like that. But really, when you talk about the real money, you talk about touring. No question.

When you write on your own, you can write the extremes. No one else is watching and you can really go as far as you need to.

I write the most sexiest records out.

Whenever I write about motherhood - and I write about it a lot - I am drawing on my experiences as a mother and also my experiences as a daughter.

You can't have a dream come true if you don't have a dream. You can't write a book if you don't write.

Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man wanted to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.

It is fair to write about the change in your magazines. But what I want to see is the change on your covers ... When the covers change, that's when culture changes.

I don't even do anything in real life. I just sit in my studio and write, I call my friends, I watch television. I don't do anything.

No no there wasn't any planned 14th season, we all saw the writing on the wall. The ratings had been going down and so fourth, that curve goes on every show and in everybody's life.

I love writing family stories.

One of my rules is never explain. A writer is a lot like a magician, if you explain how the trick works then a lot of the magic turns mundane.

I never know what I'm going to write next, and when I think I do I usually turn out to be mistaken.

It takes a lot of energy and a lot of neurosis to write a novel. If you were really sensible, you'd do something else.

A writer writes. Period. No matter if someone is buying your work or not.