If I'm not writing, I'm not fully living. It has become the essential element that defines who I am.
I think everyone should sit down and write a book. It's a lot like therapy but a lot less expensive.
You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.
My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.
In my own writing, I've mostly abandoned end-rhyme, but wordplay is still a huge part of my process.
It was the marriage that was important; Jane Austen rarely even bothered to write about the wedding.
Most of the time, tough, combative, adversarial dialogue is much more exciting than physical action.
Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing.
I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write.
One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.
God knows why - no pun intended - but every time I write a song, I feel a need to touch on religion.
I think a blog is a catalyst for a number of possible kinds of writing besides being its own medium.
For my best poems were all written when I felt the worst. When I was happy, I didn't write anything.
A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery.
For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.
Holding onto negativity makes you sick, I strongly believe that. So I release negativity by writing.
I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.
A popular writer writes about what people think. A wise writer offers them something to think about.
I was going to write a book one day and I actually did. To have it is a major accomplishment for me.
I think it's hard to write a book about happiness because fiction requires tension and complication.
Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
Scriptwriting is the toughest part of the whole racket... the least understood and the least noticed
It isn't often that a writer of superlative skills knows enough about flying to write well about it.
When I put together a graphic novel, I don't think about literary prose. I think about storytelling.
I saw an interview with Jay-Z where he said he didn't write down any of his lyrics, so I tried that.
You can be writing every day. When you go on a road trip, the trip itself becomes part of the story.
Unfortunately, writing and reporting the truth is not allowed under Castro's tyrannical dictatorship
I never set out to write a certain kind of song, I just play my guitar and see if I catch something.
I talk to my typewriter and that is what I've been working on for 40 years-how to write for talking.
The language fictional characters use is chosen for effect, at least if the author is concentrating.
Every novelist has a different purpose-and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.
Writing's not always a pleasure to me, but if I'm not writing every other pleasure loses its savour.
So much of reading and writing to me is about being elsewhere, no matter how much I love where I am.
Do people who believe in reincarnation ever say, Darn, I'm still writing the year 1612 on my checks!
Songwriting is best. It's the hardest ... finest ... tightest. It also requires the most discipline.
I've always called myself a writer/performer, not an actor because I basically write what I perform.
A professional writer is someone who writes just as well when they're not inspired as when they are.
It was okay for people to write negative things about me just as long as they spelled my name right.
My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.
If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.
Sometimes you have to be less ashamed about writing a bad poem than you would be about being silent.
You write it down because finally, when it's written down you do get it out of your system somewhat.
I think e-mail is kind of a cheap way to communicate. It's a lazy way of writing a letter, you know.
I have acting technique; I have singing technique; I don't have a writing technique to fall back on.
While writing a novel I almost completely stop reading books in the same sub-genre for the duration.
You write a story about loneliness, and you grab them all because everybody's an expert on that one.
Writing a book I have found to be like building a house. A man forms a plan, and collects materials.
I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.