Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I have long since decided if you wait for the perfect time to write, you'll never write. There is no time that isn't flawed somehow.
The writing is always the easy part, provided I can get the good material. It's the getting of the good material that's a challenge.
The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.
I attribute my good fortune to the simple fact that I have always tried to write straight from my own heart to the hearts of others.
I'm always telling myself as I write that I'm not really writing a novel; I'm just going to fool around with a character or an idea.
Understood what the struggle was about. My mother. Couldn't read or write, but she had more sense than many a graduate from Harvard.
That's what I do. Watch movies and read. Sometimes I even pretend to write, but I'm not fooling anyone. Oh, and I go to the mailbox.
I'd love to be an artist always, but if no one wants me, I'd love to write songs for other people, be a manager, nurture new talent.
Even if my marriage is falling apart and my children are unhappy, there is still a part of me that says, 'God, this is fascinating!'
It's very selfish when I write. I'm not aware, ever, of writing for another person; I'm not even really aware of writing for myself.
To write an album takes so much focus and selfish time, to just write and think about your life. For me. Maybe not for other people.
There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame.
I'm ever curious about the world. I'm driven to go out and find new things to write about. Having a vivid imagination is also a plus.
Now write this: 'The greatest rapture of my life was afforded me on a boat in Nassau by Fatima Blush,' and sign it 'James Bond, 007.'
Warhol influenced me because of his writing. If I had never read his writings and interviews, I would never have understood his work.
Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out.
Sometimes I write from personal experience, but so much depends on what mood I'm in. If I'm in a good mood, I'll write happier songs.
When I started to write, it was the '70s, and throughout that decade, we didn't have any problems with book challenges or censorship.
I like all music. Well, I don't like music that was created to make money. I don't really like bands that don't write their own music
In fact, writing for younger adults is tougher. They remember everything and if they spot a problem, they'll be sure to let you know.
There is a great deal that either has to be given up or be taken away from you if you are going to succeed in writing a body of work.
It sort of depends on the song. Some of them are pretty easy to write, and others take a while. I do a lot of writing in the morning.
It's immoral that people make money out of writing crap, but I try not to obsess about it. I don't want to spend my life being angry.
The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.
I'm an empress. I wear an apron. My typewriter writes. It didn't break the way it warned. Even crazy, I'm as nice as a chocolate bar.
I'm always determined that as a novelist I'm going to go out there and research my characters very thoroughly before I start writing.
Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.
The process of writing is like creating a game of dominoes: The first domino creates the second incident, and so forth until the end.
When one writes, there’s the double horror of discovering not only what it is that one so fears but also the triviality of that fear.
When one's not writing poems - and I'm not at the moment - you wonder how you ever did it. It's like another country you can't reach.
I love revisions...We can't go back and revise our lives, but being allowed to go back and revise what we have written comes closest.
I don't know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if I'm not there, they go away again.
Sometimes I think that my best writing comes from exposing my fears and vulnerabilities and hoping that nobody notices it's about me.
It took me seven years of writing before I published my first story. And then, the publications trickled in over the next five years.
It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?
Writing the middle of a novel is a lot like driving through Texas. You think it's never going to end, and the scenery looks the same.
This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.
When I feel difficulty coming on, I switch to another book I'm writing. When I get back to the problem, my unconscious has solved it.
It should cause no surprise that anyone so lazy as myself should be economical to the point of miserliness with everything he writes.
When you're done [with writing a book], people tell you "Well, gee, I'm not interested." "Great, I'm glad I sat down and wrote this!"
I write a thousand words a day. Nothing will stop me, I mean nothing, until the book is finished. I'm disciplined in spite of myself.
Now, what sort of person would write a scene where a young man stumbles upon a castle full only of beautiful young women? Answer: ME!
I started by writing, with my partner Ed Simmons, a monologue for Danny Thomas, that he performed at Ciro's nightclub in Los Angeles.
[N]othing is as surprising as life. Except for writing. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the only consolation.
Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you you have omitted every word that he can spare.
I know loads of coppers and dealt with them a lot when I was a journalist - coppers are easy to write for; they tend to run on rails.
You do not write your life with words...You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.
If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.
The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.
If you enjoy math and you write novels, it's very rare that you'll get a chance to put your math into a novel. I leapt at the chance.