Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The wider the author's arsenal of tools and the better technically equipped the storyteller is, the better the tale will be.
With the possible exception of God during the writing of the Bible, every writer in history has needed an editor. So do you.
When I teach writing, I have a mantra: Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.
I think the hardest part of writing anything is getting exposition out easily, without hitting people over the head with it.
I love writing traditional magazine pieces, and especially their breadth of reporting and the deliberateness of the writing.
You already know when I'm writing, so don't be surprised if it's short and dry, because I'm too hungry to write anything fat
Writing wasn't about making money. I wanted to find fulfillment in writing and telling stories, and that's what's driven me.
Death is the great Maecenas, Death is the great angel of writing. You must write because you are not going to live any more.
Of all the disciplines involved in making anything - TV, film or anything I do - the writing is the most valuable commodity.
I didn't think one day something would happen that would bring me back to Wall Street to write what is essentially a sequel.
His Majesty the King requires that the Royal Chancellery in all written documents endeavor to write in clear, plain Swedish.
When I write, I try to think back to what I was afraid of or what was scary to me, and try to put those feelings into books.
I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft.
Start producing, some writing, directing is definitely what I want to do and I'll be doing a lot more in the future as well.
These are two opposing forces, and whenever I am in active politics, I stop writing. And when I'm writing, I don't politick.
I've read somewhere that when you're writing, you should stop while you're doing well so you always want to go back to work.
My wanting to write books annihilates the original root impulse that would have me bravely and blunderingly working on them.
Method is not less requisite in ordinary conversation than in writing, provided a man would talk to make himself understood.
For me, reading books and writing them are tied together. The words of other writers teach me and refresh me and inspire me.
Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.
Don't you like to write letters? I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something.
I feel like writing about a time when I was probably, and think all of us are, the happiest before the obligations start in.
Mike Royce and I have always had success writing what we know. What we know now is that we're middle-aged, neurotic and fat.
Intellectuals (in the standard sense of the term, not [ Edward] Said's prescriptive sense) are the people who write history.
Not all the songs are real events, but I do write about stuff that is close to my heart and it comes out one way or another.
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.
After you have pumped your brains for thoughts and verses, there is a better poetry hinted in whistling a tune on your walk.
Anyone who conceives of writing as an agreeable stroll towards a middle-class life-style will never write anything but crap.
I couldn't imagine, and I don't say this with any pride, but I really couldn't imagine writing without a desperate deadline.
Updike worked this way, and I just kinda borrowed it from him. So the memoir will be relief from novel writing for a moment.
Sometimes my plot lines are so convoluted, I get calls from friends at 3 am saying; you SOB, you'll never pull this one off.
I actually think I'm probably more interested in structure than most people who write screenplays, because I think about it.
I'm not writing great literature. I'm writing commercial fiction for people to enjoy the stories and to like the characters.
If you're a voracious reader and you write something that you want to read, odds are other people will want to read it, too.
I have admired Melissa Pritchard's writing for several years now for its wisdom, its humble elegance, and its earthy comedy.
If you want to learn a thing, read that. If you want to know a thing, write that; if you want to master a thing, teach that.
I think everything has its place. So if the ideas or the fluidity isn't coming in writing, maybe it's related to ingestions.
If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one's chances of survival increase with each book one reads.
The mixture of the oral and the written traditions in the writings of Plato enabled him to dominate the history of the West.
My favourite author is Leon Trotsky - the political philosophy and the way he writes is beautiful, and really relevant, too.
Writing is such a weird emotional thing. It's hard. If you sit down with a plan to write something, it's going to be harder.
I always feel a responsibility to the people I write about. I feel obligated to portray them in the way they feel is proper.
I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.
My dear Isa, I now sit down on my botom to answer all your kind and beloved letters which you was so good as to write to me.
I've realized that I have a lot of different loves, and I want to pursue writing, but I can never divorce myself from music.
The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word "crisis." One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity.
Thank God for novelists. Thank God there are people willing to write everything down. Otherwise, so much would be forgotten.
I have this theory that anything that happens to you that leaves you alive and intact can be used somewhere in your writing.
The source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think....Let us dare to read, think, speak, write.
I think I am probably in love with silence, that other world. And that I write, in some way, to negotiate seriously with it.