Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Once you reach your fifties, you have to stop being interested in the present and write only on Elizabethan poets.
Novels definitely come more naturally to me. When I write short stories, it's always a fight against it expanding.
I have never met an author who was sorry he or she wrote a book. They are only sorry they did not write it sooner.
Glen Campbell told me, 'Stay out of the way of a good song.' I think it's true. If a song's good, don't overdo it.
For some time its been my habit to use images when preparing a speech: rather than write it down, I illustrate it.
I listened to country music my whole life. I started writing music when I was a teenager. It all came out country.
I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.
I don't want to write without a sense of drama, without passion, or without both eyes open to the world around me.
I always thought the writing process for movies and TV shows was just a blueprint. The making of it was the thing.
You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it.
You have to give people something to actually write music so that you're not just running your mouth all the time.
I think writers tend to be experience junkies, and I think they also tend to want to be on the outside looking in.
Got a long list of ex-lovers, they'll tell you I'm insane. But I got a blank space baby, and I'll write your name.
Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs.
Some of us have the good fortune of some type of natural gift, whether it's playing tennis or painting or writing.
I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.
Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.
[Raymond] Chandler, I reread him, and there's a lot of bad writing there. I don't think he knew much about people.
Writing isn't about the destination-writing is the journey that transforms the soul and gives meaning to all else.
I think it can be fun to write about relationships just because so many people can relate to what you are feeling.
[Jonathan Edwards] he has to be engaged with on this issue if you're writing about Calvinism as I am in this book.
Music is the first thing I ever cared greatly about. I've been singing and writing songs since I was six or seven.
Harvard created wonderful conditions for me as a writerbut the writing was done, almost entirely, when I got home.
I like writing melody without an instrument. It's just so - it's more like the choreography of a bee; you just go.
I was hooked on writing. I mean, where else can you get paid for sticking your nose into somebody else's business?
At the end of the day you do have to write a short novel beforehand, called a script, before you can make a movie.
I write about my life and my own experience, but I also write about things that I have no knowledge of whatsoever.
Whosoever in writing a modern history shall follow the truth too near the heels it may haply strike out his teeth.
I don't write about certain arguments I have with my wife. I'd get my head torn off if wrote about certain things.
Talent, and genius as well, is like a grain of pearl sand shifting about in the creative mind. A valued tormentor.
Write about the things that attract you. Choose your subjects the way you used to choose your toys: out of desire.
I write Not For the sake of glory Not For the sake of fame Not For the sake of success But for the sake of my soul
Half the rhymes you write, you're saying that you're better than the other MC. That's how we keep the craft sharp.
With each book, in each place, I have to keep an ongoing map as I write because otherwise I don't know where I am.
I never imagined when I began writing in the early 1960s I'd become professional and my life would be transformed.
Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .
I keep a journal, and every day I write down one great play that I had that day. I don't write down any negatives.
Sometimes dreams show me that my writing should go deeper. Dreams have not so much changed my work as deepened it.
But do not give it to a lawyer's clerk to write, for they use a legal hand that Satan himself will not understand.
Writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.
When it comes to giving advice, never do so unless you've first received a request in writing, signed by a lawyer.
It's amazing what I could've written in my life if I had realized that I should keep writing and not masturbating.
Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.
The first book I sat down to write was an historical romance. It was really bad and thankfully no one ever saw it.
It took me 10 years to write a story that pleased me - that I could look at after it was published and not cringe.
The books are recordings; that's what they have to be, recordings of the writing. They have to be happening to me.
I should add that it is open to debate whether what we call the writing of history these days is truly scientific.
Deliberately or not, every author is of course present in every book he or she writes - even in a scientific text.
I think dreams are metaphors. Everything you do in writing is metaphorical. So it seems like the same arena to me.
Grace Kelly writes great songs, sings beautifully, is a world class saxophonist, and is going to be a big big star