Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time.
Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet-anchor of your liberties; write its precepts in your hearts, and practice them in your lives.
I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.
My natural inclination is to think in scenes. So that's how I write, and the issue for me is usually: what to compress for speed.
You don't want to write your own opinion, you don't want to just represent yourself, but represent yourself through someone else.
I speak Mandarin and can read and write a little. I took a few classes at Harvard to get better in my reading and writing skills.
Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, 'Don't try.' That fits the writing, too. I don't try; I just type.
I've never been good at rock'n'roll songs, anyway; either I'm blessed or I'm cursed, but whatever I write comes out sounding old.
My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold, and anything else is just a waste of time.
I love playing and I love singing, and the writing. There's kind of a symbiotic relationship between the writing and the playing.
What's interesting about songs where the writer is genuinely in love with words is that it's easy to read the lyrics like a poem.
To just write one song to then go and play huge festivals all around the world it's exciting and it's never really been the case.
In writing the autobiography, I can really chuckle when I look at the songs. I was acting out the part. I saw myself as a victim.
A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back.
You can write a great country record and still be angry. Who's angrier than Toby Keith? He's angrier than the average 10 rappers.
Like the child, the creative writing student is posited as a centre of vulnerable creativity, needful of attention and authority.
I think I'm too lazy a writer to do something like historical fiction. You have to do so much research. I just write what I know.
Fiction writing is a strange business when you think about it. You sit down and weave a network of lies to explore deeper truths.
Songwriting is a mysterious art. When I sit down to write a song, the end result should be mysterious and have this dark quality.
I came to write after several mini careers. I did live theatre, managed a cosmetics store and was a local television personality.
There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.
It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you'll be labeled a political writer.
I don't *ever* write about real people. Art is supposed to be better than that. If you want a slice of life, look out the window.
I loathed every day and regret every day I spent in school. I like to be taught to read and write and add and then be left alone.
When you're writing for the New York Times someone reading it knows the topic better than you do and knows when you've messed up.
Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.
I rarely listen to music while writing. If I don't like it, it bothers me, and if I like it, it absorbs me so much I can't write.
I think it's sort of an outrage that companies should have to hire firms to teach the college graduates they employ how to write.
I don't think I've ever dared to write down what I see in the ruins of me, or tell in any detail the scars and all their secrets.
When you go on tour and see everyone, you're like, "Oh my god. This is actually real life." That inspires me to write more songs.
When you're writing what you love, it's the most fun you can have with your clothing still on, unless of course, you write naked.
If someone can write great music... Paul McCartney is a genius. He's so prolific. All we should do is bow down to Paul McCartney.
I write dozens and dozens of pages more than I need, and then edit them down to size. It's more like sculpture than construction.
I've had to write in a different way because I'm not in a bad place and I'm not heartbroken, so there's no one I want revenge on.
Education is not complete unless we teach our children not only how to read and write but the difference between right and wrong.
I'm not sure I would have ever decided to try to write when I was forty-five if I hadn't already gotten that degree [in English].
Names which tell stories have been worth millions of dollars. So a great deal of research often precedes the selection of a name.
It's people who write music because they are obsessed that I like; because they have something to say and no other way to say it.
Yeah, well, artists are a lot like gangsters. They both know that the official version, the one everyone else believes, is a lie.
I, as a young guy getting out of music school, I didn't like the prospect of spending my life writing music for about 200 people.
It often seems to me that the biggest single issue for a writer is how to stay buoyant enough to go on writing. How not to drown.
The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.
It's so easy to get caught up in your own self-doubt when you're writing. It can be so easy to tell yourself, "Who am I kidding?"
I'm going to do whatever interests me. Look, writing 'Rabbit Hole' came out of an interest in diversifying my portfolio, frankly.
I never know when I sit down, just what I am going to write. I make no plan; it just comes, and I don't know where it comes from.
The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.
I'm a better writer now because I've worked very hard at getting better. My long-range goal will always be to write better books.
By the time writing was invented, the Greeks and Egyptians had already learned to extract opium from poppies to facilitate sleep.
And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.
When I was writing Caramelo the last couple of years, a sixty-hour work week was normal. And now I'm lucky if I have eight hours.