Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.
The fun of reading as "an exchange between consciousnesses, a way for human beings to talk to each other about stuff we can't normally talk about."
And then simultaneously I don't think they're asking you to necessarily write in stone that this is what you're going to do or what you have to do.
If I feel like I'm writing from an agenda, that's when I throw something away. If I have a strategy I feel like I'm doing it for the wrong reasons.
Oftentimes an originator of new language forms is called 'pretentious' by jealous talents. But it ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.
I was always writing scripts, and I had made several shorts, before and after film school. But I worked a variety of temp positions over the years.
If I thought that what I'm doing when I write is expressing myself, I'd junk the typewriter. Writing is a much more complicated activity that that.
I heard a white writer say, 'Oh, I'd never put black people in my writing, I'm afraid I would offend someone by doing it wrong.' I can't bear that!
I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences.
I carry my iPod everywhere. My favorite group is the John Butler Trio, an Australian jam band. The lead singer and guitarist writes amazing lyrics.
I do have pleasure when I'm writing. I mean, I'm aware of pleasure. And sometimes I make myself laugh, with a joke or something; or I feel gleeful.
It's surprising that readers don't see challenging writing as morally hazardous, when it might be pushing the same kinds of boundaries as art does.
Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.
My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.
What I write is very personal, but not autobiographical. It's more 'thematically personal' - what's up in my life in terms of themes at the moment.
I'm never quite sure how the poem is going to resolve itself and that I'm always in some way surprised. I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.
Its impossible to control the reception of your work - the only thing you can control is the experience of writing itself, and the work you create.
I never sit down to write. When I'm moved, I do it. I just wait for it to come. You just hear it. I can't really describe writing. It's in my head.
Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.
Even though language has its richness the relationship between language and the writer is always like a stone and you have to make the stone human.
When you write a novel you have to live with the characters for a long time. So I prefer short stories. I never wrote anything more than 250 pages.
I've never had much attraction to writing fanfiction. I don't spend much time thinking about properties I don't own, as it's 'wasted' brain-cycles.
Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.
Books, I don't know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them.
When I write something that would have made me laugh as a 10-year-old, or would have scared me or would have excited me, I know I'm onto something.
I wish to God I knew as much about writing as I did when I was 19. I was absolutely certain about most things then. Also, I suspect, more accurate.
All writers have periods when they stop writing, when they cannot write, and this is always painful and terrible because writing is like breathing.
I'm not unfamiliar with music, and I really do write music. I've gotten a talent for it. I don't have the technical skills, but I do plan to learn.
It’s a fair-sized job to write a book that people can be bothered just to read; when they begin to steal copies, you are really getting some place.
There's always ways of motivating yourself to higher levels. Write about it, dream about it. But after that, turn it into action. Don't just dream.
Content, it dreams awake, and spins the fabric of tales. There is really nothing to be done with such imagery except to use it: in writing, in art.
What a long way it is from one life to another: yet why write if not for that distance; if things can be let go, every before replaced by an after.
My biggest superhero of writing is Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine fabulist. He's an amazingly perceptive writer, but also willing to make a joke.
I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to reveal a living form.
I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype, and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs.
I became fascinated by the fact that people write to give away rather than write to be read. It's the difference between playwrights and novelists.
I prefer writing for myself to perform, I guess. But if I had to choose, I'd rather perform in someone's movie than write a movie for someone else.
I've always thought of the book as a visual art form, and it should represent a single artistic idea, which it does if you write your own material.
I'm fairly convinced that the Kingdom of God is for the broken-hearted. You write of 'powerlessness.' Join the club, we are not in control. God is.
Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.
I write songs to handle emotional pain. I guess what they say is true: with every heartache comes a great song. I also pray and have great friends.
The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.
When I'm writing a book, I draw from my immediate experience, and my books are therefore almost a snapshot of where I am at that moment in my life.
Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people.
I've always spent a lot of time on my records with what I think were unique rhythmic approaches... but no one ever writes about your rhythm playing
If I write something, I fear it will happen, and if I love too much, I fear I will lose that person; nevertheless, I cannot stop writing or loving.
I long to create something that can't be used to keep us passive: I want to write a script about plumbing, how every pipe is joined to every other.
We all have these tendencies in us that could go this way or that. I think that's the real key in writing. To look at a character without judgment.
I like density, not volume. I like to leave something to the imagination. The reader must fit the pieces together, with the author's discreet help.
You grow up watching certain films or admiring certain filmmakers, and to write a love letter to one and have them validate it, it's extraordinary.