Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's true that I'm taking a break from writing a regular column to do other things but it's got nothing to do with what dear Simon has or has not written.
In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.
There's a perception that good writing is writing which runs smoothly. But smooth-running prose can work against what you're trying to express in a novel.
The reader cannot see into your heart. He will know only what you tell him. Make the blind see your words. Make the hard-hearted feel. Make the deaf hear.
The artwork had very little to do with the thought process, and the writing too, for that matter. What happens, happens, and it happens outside the brain.
Only another writer can know how much damage writing a novel can do to you. It's an unnatural activity to sit at a desk and squeeze words out of yourself.
The greatest thing about writing a book is that at first it's all inchoate, but the more you work on it, the more the book teaches you its internal rules.
I'd always wanted to write a song about a leather jacket and how wearing it makes you feel. I love leather jackets, and I've got a big collection of them.
When I go into a pitch room and I'm pitching something with a writing partner, everybody tends to look at the guy, even if I'm doing a lot of the talking.
I suppose I started writing seriously at 16 years old. I thought I wrote a novel at 16 and sent it to New York! They sent it back because it wasn't novel.
I think I'm someone who can prattle on a long time about something, which serves me well as a novelist, but it's the enemy when I'm writing short stories.
If you ever want to get the facts straight about me or the Batman, please write to the original source, myself, for the truth, instead of second guessing.
You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.
... maybe that's all anyone who writes or paints or sculpts is doing anyway -- excusing themselves for refusing to live like other people or be like them.
The writing in Mission to Paris, sentence after sentence, page after page, is dazzling. If you are a John le Carr fan, this is definitely a novel for you.
God have mercy on the sinner Who must write with no dinner, No gravy and no grub, No pewter and no pub, No bellyand no bowels, Only consonants and vowels.
Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.
The four rules of writing... 1. Write to discover. 2. There is no greater discovery than love. 3. All love comes from the Creator. 4. Write what you will.
For me it's also - the music is equally as important. I mean I think as somebody who writes music, there just has to sort of be the marriage between both.
That's something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.
A lot of music for me was about - I mean aside from the fun and challenge of writing and being really good friends with my bandmates - getting to perform.
I always tell people I write songs, but I'm a writer. It's a difference. I can write songs to music, but I can write a story. I can see ideas spark in me.
My name became a brand and I'd love to say it was the plan from the start. But the only plan was to keep writing books. And I've stuck to that ever since.
Reading is very creative - it's not just a passive thing. I write a story; it goes out into the world; somebody reads it and, by reading it, completes it.
As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings.
I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance-but it must be acceptance on his own terms.
When I graduated college I needed to make money while I was pursuing acting, so I read screenplays and made a living writing coverage on them for studios.
I think the first trick to writing a feminist work is to write plenty of women. That way you get to write characters, instead of worrying about paradigms.
My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.
A limited vocabulary, but one with which you can make numerous combinations, is better than thirty thousand words that only hamper the action of the mind.
It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.
Writing about writing is a bit like talking about a conversation you are having; it tends to obscure desperation about where the next word is coming from.
The will to originality is not the will to be peculiar and unlike anybody else; it means the desire to derive one's consciousness from its primary source.
You list the dead. You tell the stories of the past. You write about the catastrophes and the massacres. What about the living, Finnikin? Who honors them?
I kept writing all these ballads; they're me speaking about life. But how am I gonna do the live show I wanna do if I don't have something I can dance to?
If you don't have a sensation of apprehension when you set out to find a story and a swagger when you sit down to write it, you are in the wrong business.
Your vivid, exciting companionship in the office must not be your audience, you must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.
But usually I'll wake up and start writing about nine o'clock. I'll probably write for about three hours, and I'll do that over the next month and a half.
I very much hope that when my wife reads my writings so she reads it as if she is a character and not the real one. Sometimes she takes it too personally.
Mexico is a very complex, mysterious country. I will never understand it fully, and that's why I write so much about it, in order to try to understand it.
Every year I used to write a musical inspired by John Waters, and I would get all my friends together and put on this perverse, emotional, tragic musical.
I talked to [Larry] Kramer a little bit about it while I was writing 'Remembering Denny' . Denny was one of those people who took a long time to come out.
I don't think actors are to blame for poor writing. The culture changes first, and the theater follows it. In the case of the movies, it's the same thing.
I just want to write. It's like once I get those obsessive thoughts out of my head, once they're written down, they're somehow set free and I can move on.
Writing screenplays is incredibly hard. I can't call it joy. Writing Novels? Joy. Directing? Joy. Writing Screenplays? That's where you pay all your dues.
You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.
Men of quality are in the wrong to undervalue, as they often do, the practise of a fair and quick hand in writing; for it is no immaterial accomplishment.
With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions...
I think the reason working-class people don't write books is because they are encouraged to believe that only certain people are permitted to write books.
Songwriting is like editing. You write down all this stuff - all this bad, stupid stuff - and then you have to get rid of everything except the very best.