Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer.
Write about the thing that scares you most or your most private confession and you'll never have a problem coming up with decent fiction.
I work eight hours a day, but I'm not writing all that time. I'm thinking, editing, looking something up. Thinking is what I do a lot of.
As to writing another book on geometry [to replace Euclid] the middle ages would have as soon thought of composing another New Testament.
I'm pretty disciplined to keep the momentum of a story going by writing everyday, even if it's only a couple paragraphs or a page or two.
I don't think that you can write music if you don't know how to play an instrument. You have to know the basics, then you can go forward.
Acting and writing go together. Actors write because they love words and becoming other people - we love to escape into other characters.
I can't constantly be trying to write the unwritten song, the song that the 15-year-old girl needs. I need to write the song that I need.
I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.
The Internet is a fantastic, strange place where you can write an open letter and be reasonably assured that people are going to read it.
I learned to write by listening to people talk. I still feel that the best of my writing comes from having heard rather than having read.
I've been writing since I was six years old. It's hard to imagine stopping. I would hate to think that I've already written my best book.
An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.
No matter what you write, it's a matter of putting words in a certain order so that the reader will be interested in what you're writing.
Of course I'd sometimes have characters from downstate living upstate, but it took a while for me to start writing about where I grew up.
We should have a glorious conflagration, if all who cannot put fire into their works would only consent to put their works into the fire.
I tend to plan as I write. And I want to leave myself open and the character open to keep on going until it seems to be the time to stop.
My first exposure to the vocabulary of inter-beingness was through the writings of Thich Nhat Hahn, to whom I remain enormously grateful.
I do ask myself sometimes, what am I doing writing about animals that talk like we do? But I guess it's okay if it brings across a point.
I think I have sort of gravitated toward issues that I don't know the answers to, because that's what's more interesting for me to write.
A lot of people have said to me, 'That's a great idea, running for president. You'll get booked for more speeches. You can write a book.'
Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.
I didn't go to Latin America thinking, 'I'm gonna write a book. This is what I'm gonna do.' I went there to work for UNICEF and to learn.
When you make a decision to write according to a set schedule and really stick to it, you find yourself writing very fast. At least I do.
I began writing for theater, and maybe because of that I've always thought of myself as a theater writer who does work in film sometimes.
I've always been a writer who tackles complex themes and risky subjects - I write about the things that people think but never say aloud.
I'm not the kind of guy who sits around at home and writes songs. Once in a while I'll pick up a guitar and noodle around, but it's rare.
Queen Latifah was writing poetry. Maybe Latifah's 'Ladies First' and Angelou's 'Phenomenal Woman' are the same thing, a generation apart.
But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.
To this day, The Duke and I remains particularly close to my heart; I felt it was the novel in which my writing took a huge leap forward.
The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There's a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject.
...few young poets [are] testing their poems against the ear. They're writing for the page, and the page, let me tell you, is a cold bed.
In writing I found a way to make silence and to be silent. The short story has a lot more silence than the novel and that is its success.
One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.
All I write about is what's happened to me and to people I know, and the better I know them, the more likely they are to be written about.
There were songs I would write about breaking up with somebody before I broke up with them, months and months before I broke up with them.
We writers dream of a future where actors are mostly computer generated and their performances can be adjusted, by us, on a laptop, alone.
When I'm writing a woman character, I don't think, 'What would a woman do?' I just think, 'What would this character do in this situation?
To me, torture would be, "I can't think what to write in the next sentence. I'm stuck." Torture would be if you didn't have the next idea.
Before too long I was playing badly out in some bars around Memphis, but as soon as I learned a few chords I started writing my own stuff.
Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.
Don't talk about it - you'll talk it away. Let the ideas flow from your mind to the page without exposing them to air. Especially hot air.
Poetic justice, poetic justice.. if I told you that a flower bloom in a dark room would you trust it. I mean I write poems in these songs.
The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present.
Often poets fall into groups that exclude others, and don't pay attention to those who write in different ways. It seems so limited to me.
I'm partial to coffee shops, brain work, and poems on the page. I write after midnight. Sometimes, twisty syntax happens, and I surrender.
I'm writing from New Zealand - a country that decided from the beginning that the War was wrong, and chose not to participate in Iraq War.
Now and again thousands of memories converge, harmonize, arrange themselves around a central idea in a coherent form, and I write a story.
After the first few readings in comedy venues I did begin to write for laughs. There's something so gratifying about stimulating laughter.
You write your life story by the choices you make. You never know if they have been a mistake. Those moments of decision are so difficult.