Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've often wished when I started a book I knew what was going to happen. I talked to writers who write 80-page outlines, and I'm just in awe of that.
Anyone who writes an autobiographical work at the age of 34 is, at best, presumptuous. It occurred to me that it was time to set the record straight.
There are a lot of people in this country who really like my writing. And a lot of writers respect me. But the so-called establishment? They hate me.
Semi-facetiously, when people ask me why I write these kinds of stories, I simply say that I was warped as a child. And, there is some truth to that.
I'd love to do another television series. I really love the writing process, and as an actor I really like how much you get to examine in television.
I spent 10 years as a marketing manager. I've found my experience in the financial world invaluable background for writing about white-collar crimes.
Writing orchestra music, you need for the emotional content to come from everyone doing everything together, adding up as it goes, a crowd mentality.
I started drawing at a very young age. Writing a story wasn't satisfying, but to actually draw our own world - it's like controlling your own dreams.
I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.
I've always equated the writing process with editing, sort of like when I get through editing the movie, that's like my last draft of the screenplay.
[On culture] It's living the core values when you hire; when you write an email; when you are working on a project; when you are walking in the hall.
Learn from cinema. Be economic with descriptions. Sort out the telling detail from the lifeless one. Write dialogue that people would actually speak.
Having decided to follow my own intuitive path I began to write music on the basis of harmonized spoken words, for new instruments and in new scales.
The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people, and then they come after you with machetes.
The simile has to match the tone of its surroundings and has to be like a little joke. Writing a simile that isn't funny on some level is quite hard.
[In my writing] I know that I have made a caricature out of [others' academic] theories [but] I think that caricatures are frequently good portraits.
My work is more driven by the creative word. It's immersed in other writing and printed work, rather than drawn so much from life or past experience.
[Television] is a great medium for writers, because there's just no time for a studio to interfere very long. You write it, you shoot it; it's on TV.
I usually don't write about my life right when it happens. I process it, and I store it away. Then, when I get in the mood I pull the stuff back out.
The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply because major poets write a lot.
When you are in deep distress and cannot restrain some expression of it, sit down and write out a harsh letter venting your anger. But don't send it.
Just going through a lot in my life, becoming more confident in myself, writing my own music and just really getting in the studio and just doing it.
I think of the author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, 'I will tell you a story' and then he passes the hat.
Other writers definitely influence my writing. What encourages me and inspires me is when I read a good book. It makes me want to be a better writer.
I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any attention at all.
I don't think writing or co-writing my songs makes me a better singer, but I haven't really got an excuse not to do it as I've got too many opinions!
Top people have very clear goals. They know who they are and they know what they want. They write it down and they make plans for its accomplishment.
For me, reading has to be pleasurable. Otherwise, I'm ditching the book and turning on Netflix. There's way too much good TV right now to write dull.
Im always in that mode - whenever I have a little free time, Im always recording songs, writing, whatever I gotta do. Its like my job is my vacation.
I don't like to read things that people write about me. I'd rather read what kids have to say about me, because it's not their profession to do that.
I really get fired up with female protagonists. I can really feel the difference in myself when I am writing a script that has a woman at the center.
Unfortunately many young writers are more concerned with fame than with their own work... It's much more important to write than to be written about.
It's actually very hard to find an area of the economy that doesn't fundamentally change in the measure that we are able to read and write life code.
Sometimes, I do have something to say, so I'll sit there and I'll write a song to someone - and then I just throw it away because it makes me cringe.
If I were a writer and not a singer in 10 years, I don't know how I'd feel about writing really personal songs and getting someone else to sing them.
I'm only 49 years old. I'm still in the middle of this whole thing. I don't feel like it's finished at all. I'm still planning to write better songs.
I hate a style, as I do a garden, that is wholly flat and regular; that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality.
It's never perfect when I write it down the first time, or the second time, or the fifth time. But it always gets better as I go over it and over it.
It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.
I feel quite at home writing short stories but nervous and anxious when writing novels, as if the bad time of consecutive failures might arise again.
I was a much better writer than I was an athlete. My college coach told me flat out, he said, "Deford, you write basketball better than you play it."
I'm not into, Hey, what's your sign? or any of that. But I don't know how I got here, and I don't know how I write songs. I don't know why I breathe.
To a certain extent I imagine a play is completely finished in my mind - in my case, at any rate - without my knowing it, before I sit down to write.
I have no plans to write an autobiography, I will leave that to others. I'm sure they will turn me into a homosexual or a Nazi spy or something else.
You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money's in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.
I meet kids now who become novelists, poets, write for the theater and movies, who were simply inspired by what they saw during the Spoleto Festival.
Most writers write to say something about other people - and it doesn't last. Good writers write to find out about themselves - and it lasts forever.
When I am writing, I focus one hundred percent on my writing. Then, by the time I'm half way through the book, I'm already thinking about the ending.
The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you.
I never write Metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop.