Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm terribly afraid of failure. When your identity is wrapped up in writing and you've written something that doesn't work, it's a tough pill to swallow.
When I'm writing a book, sentence by sentence, I'm not thinking theoretically. I'm just trying to work out the story from inside the characters I've got.
I took time in the day to write as much of the book as I possibly could. I didn't write too much at night, because I don't like to - I'd rather watch TV.
I write something that I believe I've made up, and it's only when a friend later points it out to me that I realise I've been writing about myself again.
Then in my early teens, when the home computer bubble was blowing, I had one of the first, an Acorn Atom, and used to write primitive adventures on that.
I enjoy writing in a lot of different styles, so I pushed to find that vicious place, or that vulnerable place, and let it exist as intensely as I could.
Writing is fun - at least mostly. I write for four hours every day. After that I go running. As a rule, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That's easy to manage.
The writing of You've Got a Friend was one of the most incredible experiences because it was mostly inspiration. It just came to me almost as we hear it.
Nothing is too long or too short either if you have a true and interesting tale and what I call a "graphic" writing style combined with educational aims.
Shakespeare in Love... such smart writing of an alternative view of history, and such beautiful acting. Like most Americans, I'm a sucker for the accent.
Sometimes I think of writing as becoming this antenna that picks up the vibrations all around me in order to find out how and where next I'll be steered.
I think all of my songs are either based on personal experience or will be based on personal experience, because I do write a lot of songs prophetically.
Writing songs always trumps whatever else was on the schedule, it really is the most important and can be so fickle, you have to grab it when it's there.
My favourite piece of music is actually 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' as a whole. For me, it's the most perfect and brilliant example of rock song writing.
I started singing when I was a teenager. I always wanted to write songs; I just didn't understand how someone could sing without writing their own songs.
The discipline required for athletics carried through to writing. You call it obsession. I call it discipline. By the way, I see nothing wrong with that.
The actual act of writing brings me such pleasure - to tell stories, to engage in cultural criticism, to reflect, to question, all of it is invigorating.
I never really wanted to be an actor. And that was the beginning of it, I began to write things down and eventually became a writer on a television show.
I just figured if I'm going to call myself a songwriter throughout my life, then writing for most genres of music is something I should at least attempt.
Generally, I find that when you're writing and having fun with the writing, that energy and dynamism is going to come out in the text one way or another.
The thing that usually gets me through the writing is that my feelings of wretched inadequacy are irregularly punctuated by brief flashes of omnipotence.
Writing in French is one of my ambitions. I'd like to be able to dream one day in French. Italian and French are the two languages that I'd like to know.
If you're writing about a character, if he's a powerful character, unless you give him vulnerability I don't think he'll be as interesting to the reader.
I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of brushes like quail before gunshot.
China is completely lacking in self-awareness and as someone who has stepped outside that society, I have a responsibility to write about it as I see it.
Sometimes I just want to write a really intense love scene. But I can't do that in my books for teens, or parents will complain - believe me, I've tried.
I'm always writing a new book even when books are being shopped around, and none of my books has been published in the order that they have been written.
Charles Dickens was an incredibly cinematic writer. He wrote this one hundred years before there were movies. He writes very thematically. It is amazing.
You simply keep putting down one damn word after the other, as you hear them, as they come to you. You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist.
In the writing, I'm just trying to go deeper, emotionally, and learn more about myself and reveal more and find a way to connect with people in new ways.
It's so tedious writing cookbooks or writing the recipes because I've never been much of a measurer. But to write a book, you have to measure everything.
After writing fiction for so long, I like the discovery element of nonfiction, in the sense that when you find the right information, it feels like gold.
I don't think talking about myself making songs is a very interesting topic, there are so many other more engaging things to think about and write about.
Right now I feel so inspired, it's hard to believe. I've written about 20 songs in the last two days. I'd gone about four months without writing a thing.
Am I surprised that Joe Klein [pseudonymous author of Primary Colors which he denied writing] lied? No, because in my opinion reporters lie all the time.
I want to be an author/director and I'm writing my second book now and I want to make a movie of it, and I hope I get to do this for the rest of my life.
Writing a poem is a lesson in the truest empathy. And to truly have empathy is to truly know power, or at least the only kind of power I’m interested in.
I always write lyrics first and the rhythm and the melody come from the lyrics. It always comes from the lyrics: words have rhythm and words have melody.
It's not what you do. It's the way you do it-stripping, or writing, or talking . . . or just breathing. Do it with an air, and never admit you're scared.
Most artists, you know, you spend their entire lives learning how to play music and write songs, and they don't really know how the music business works.
Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life.
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Drawing used to be a civilized thing to do, like reading and writing. It was taught in elementary schools. It was democratic. It was a boon to happiness.
I just think its the changes that age brings. You slow down a little bit ... the writers are smart enough to write all those changes that life gives you.
Don't come to New York until you've finished a book. It's too expensive. You'll never write anything. You'll spend all your time working to pay the rent.
It would be so simple to allow children, when tired of sitting, to rise, and when tired of writing, to desist, and then their bones would not be twisted.
I suspect that writer's block afflicts mainly people who have some stable and ample source of income outside of writing. So far it hasn't been a problem.
What's really good is that there are people making stories and writing them and the vast majority never see the light of day and it doesn't matter a fig.
I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination.
How many words a day do I write? Between six and seven thousand. And how many hours does that take? Three on a good day, as high as thirteen on a bad one