Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As for my next book, I won't write it till it has grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.
I want to be able to write, that's my first love and I don't want to deviate from it even though I probably could have made a lot more money.
I was born on the same day as Edgar Allan Poe and Dolly Parton: January 19. I am absolutely certain that this affects my writing in some way.
A guest at a dinner party observed the strange expression on James Thurber's face. 'Don't be concerned,' said Thurber's wife. 'He's writing.'
When I'm writing, I like to seal everything off and face the wall, not to look outside the window. The only way out is through the sentences.
It is quite beneath the dignity of a person holding a Bachelor of Arts degree to engage in such a vulgar occupation as the writing of novels.
It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else.
To me, making a tape is like writing a letter – there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again, and I wanted it to be a good one.
In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.
Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.
We write to find out what we didn’t know we knew. We write to know deeper and truer. We write to connect the dots: a whole new constellation.
One of the best things about directing movies, as opposed to merely writing them, is that there's no confusion about who's to blame: You are.
Every writer has certain subjects that they write about again and again, and . . . most people's books are just variations on certain themes.
Actually, when I write, there is a feeling of necessity, of something that is stronger than myself that demands that I must write as I write.
While I was writing I assumed it would be published under a pseudonym, and that liberated me: what I wrote was exactly what I wanted to read.
Someone once said that the joy is not in writing but in having written. I can't say I find that to be true, though I understand the sentiment.
What I look for in any character, good or bad, is whether I can hear him speak. If I can imagine him that clearly, then I can write about him.
I read what I like to write: romantic suspense. I also love thrillers and novels of suspense, but I can't handle extreme violence and torture.
My biggest kick in music -playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?
I have always known that writing fiction had little effect on the world; that if it did, young men would not have gone to war after The Iliad.
I write my novels personally, desperately and non-negligently. When I write my novels, I think about my novels only, and never do other works.
You want songs to sound cohesive with the other songs on the record but when you first start writing you just want to write to tell the truth.
These people that write books on how to succeed and how to think positively make millions because it's something that doesn't occur naturally.
Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in my mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul.
Wherein we discover that many of the "rules" for good writing and good sex are the same: Keep your hand moving, lose control, and don't think.
I write about broken people who need other people in order to go on. But those are the only kind of people I know to exist. We are all broken.
One of the things I love most about acting, that I get to do research and read books, but it's just for me and I don't have to write about it.
to write a novel in the heart of London is next to an impossibility. I feel as if I were nailing a flag to the top of a mast in a raging gale.
As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn't seen before. Writing a poem is always a process of discovery.
We're all writing out of a wound, and that's where our song comes from. The wound is singing. We're singing back to those who've been wounded.
Writing is like the relationship with your bowels. First you can, then you can't. Finally, you must. Only then should you reach for the paper.
I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way.
The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.
I believe all stories are love stories, and there are kinds and kinds of love, so I will always write about love, but not necessarily romance.
What's great is that starting a blog can get you lot of attention for your writing. But it doesn't have to be for anybody other than yourself.
She’d majored in English, hoping that meant she could spend the next four years reading and writing. And maybe the next four years after that.
Don't try to follow any trends, just concentrate on writing great songs and knowing your instrument. All the other stuff will fall into place.
Even after the mothering dropped because my son grew up, the writing - the muse - was always the third wheel, the lowest on the priority list.
The hardest period for a writer is the period in-between writing. That's when you can go crazy if you don't allow the creative juices to flow.
Honestly I don't like to write songs that often, only when I feel like I need to and when I've got something that I really want to sing about.
I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.
If it hurt me to have to give up a painting I figured it had to hurt them to write the check. That's how I came up with the price for my work.
The number of people writing poems is vast, and their reasons for doing so are many, that much can be surmised from the stacks of submissions.
Drawing is the first language of the human being before writing. It's a transcription of how the human being sees reality, not reality itself.
Miller didn't write Death of a Salesman. He released it. It was there inside him, waiting to be turned loose. That's the measure of its merit.
If there's a therapist who wants a writing project, I think there's a need for a book about how the culture affects the mental health of boys.
A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.
I don't write because of some rare talent. I write because I have a little voice inside of me that says really cool things and never shuts up.
For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew.
Writing an op-ed feels like I'm taking the SAT. It's so hard. It feels like homework. And if it feels like homework, it just doesn't get done.