Writing Quotes

I think if you feel like you were born to write, then you probably were.

I think if you are writing an instrumental you are dealing with more of an aesthetic in a sense but a lyric is more of a putting yourself on the line and a much more expensive exercise.

Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.

Even experimental composers, revolutionary composers, self-styled radicals are, in writing revolutionary music, recognizing the music that preceded them precisely by trying to avoid it.

The trees are God's great alphabet: With them He writes in shining green Across the world His thoughts serene.

I love writing. I love to write, and I would eventually love to have some of my work produced.

If you know the voice you're writing for it's such a shortcut. It's such a catalyst to creating the kind of energy you want.

I liked writing the negative ads more than - because it's more minor chords.

I never thought I'd write, because I'd never written anything in my whole life.

I really get fired up with female protagonists. I can really feel the difference in myself when I am writing a script that has a woman at the center.

The writing is all done, so it's all about verbalizing everything from point A to point B, and certainly there's a bit of politics involved, so it's a different thing.

Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.

Letters remind us that when we write we can bring back the best of times, even make time stand still, if only for a few minutes.

Since fat crayons, I write and display chaos. My plan is damage.

It kills your writing if you try to manipulate it with crude politics.

The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die.

One extends one's limits only by exceeding them.

I worship F. Scott Fitzgerald and I love his writing.

Being a mother has absolutely forced me. You have to write things down and have systems for all of it. And then you set up systems and you realize they don't work.

You might 'write from the heart,' but you'd better polish with your brain.

New Zealand is the only country I know well enough to write about. It can sometimes lead to complications.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.

It is a good thing to write for the amusement of the public, but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction, their profit, their actual and tangible benefit.

There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket.

You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.

When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. It's much more relaxing to actually write.

Reading takes time, and the glass teat takes too much of it.

Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment.

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.

That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.

I'm writing. The pages are starting to stack up. My morale is improving the more I feel like a writer.

On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken.

The biggest laughs are based on the biggest disappointments and the biggest fears.

To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.

And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.

Your page stands against you and says to you that you are a thief.

Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with its difficulties and a pursuit of its felicities and beauty.

Writing novels is the hardest thing I've ever done, including digging irrigation ditches.

You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.

Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more.

Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones.

A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love.

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.

Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.