Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I could claim any number of high-flown reasons for writing, just as you can explain certain dogs behavior... But maybe, it’s that they’re dog, and that’s what dogs do.
No book includes the entire world. It's limited. And so it doesn't seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There's so much other material to write about.
I will always really work hard to write as much as I can, but I also love sitting back and waiting on those big Nashville songwriters to send me some great songs, too.
In the big picture I write for an audience of people I've never met. By the final draft I'm looking for anything in the prose that's prospectively boring to strangers.
Well, yes, as I was a rather bad actor then and I wasn't making enough money, I thought, to make enough money to not make money as an actor, I'd better do some writing.
I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself.
Initially I only decided to try and write a novel because I wasn't getting enough screenwriting work. It wasn't a long-held ambition, and certainly the idea came first.
When I was young, I just sat down and started playing Chopsticks at the piano. I got so far and then lost interest. Eventually, I regained it and started writing songs.
I stopped working a few years ago because I just lost a spark that I'd had before. I thought I'd just try writing, and maybe start directing, but I did it very quietly.
I can't say L'Etranger influenced me to write, but for the first time I considered the possibility of telling a story that resembled my own experiences in my own voice.
I think a lot of people are so scared of failure that they don't put everything they have into whatever they want to do. I think, in turn, they write their own destiny.
Whether a character in your novel is full of choler, bile, phlegm, blood or plain old buffalo chips, the fire of life is in there, too, as long as that character lives.
I write every day for most of the work day, and I try to write 2,500 words per day... If I don't make it a routine and treat it like a job, I'd never get anything done.
When I write a novel I put into play all the information inside me. It might be Japanese information or it might be Western; I don't draw a distinction between the two.
It's that quirky kind of weekend feeling they write ridiculous sunny-day songs about. You know the ones--I'm sure they're on your iPod even though you'd never admit it.
I just sat down and thought, I'm going to write a song today, I'm going to give it a try. So I just stuck it on a tape like everything else. That was just another song.
Here in New York City you can now walk around smoking weed and all they will do if they see you is write you a ticket. Unfortunately, the ticket will be to a Jets game.
The - writing is a kind of act of aggression, and a person who is not aggressive in his normal, may I say, intercourse with humanity might well be an aggressive writer.
If you want to write an angry e-mail, write it but don't send it. It's based on my experience that whenever I have acted out in some manner, I have always regretted it.
While I am not a scientist, and write primarily on economics, tax policy and budget issues, I have been fascinated over the years by Heartland's work on climate change.
When I started writing at 18 or 19, I had a fear of anything autobiographical, but I've come to realise that my writing is very autobiographical at the emotional level.
I had to do the academic writing. At a top research university, publishing of a certain kind is very important. So your friend is right. You can't do three things well.
I'm struggling at the end to get out of the valley of hectoring youth, journalistic middle age, imposture, moneymaking, public relations, bad writing, mental confusion.
No one on earth is so boring and insignificant that he or she is not worth writing or reading about...One thing's for sure—no one but you can be the hero of your story.
Epithets, like pepper, Give zest to what you write; And if you strew them sparely, They whet the appetite: But if you lay them on too thick, You spoil the matter quite!
The interesting thing writing about [Buckminster] Fuller is really to attempt to resurrect all of that and to do so for a new generation that has not grown up with him.
The men who act stand nearer to the mass of man than the men who write; and it is in their hands that new thought gets its translation into the crude language of deeds.
The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.
I have to write the story I want to write. I never wrote them with a focus group of 8-year-olds in mind. I have to continue telling the story the way I want to tell it.
From the reader's point of view, punctuation provides a map for one who must otherwise drive blindly past the by-ways, intersections, and detours of a writer's thought.
I can scarce bring myself to believe, that I am admitted to a familiar correspondence, and all the license of friendship, with a man who writes blank verse like Milton.
I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses our society, and if we do not stop being violent we have no future.
Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.
But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.
I did go to UCLA for art, but the other option was going to Sarah Lawrence and doing creative writing all the way. So that is part of the reason I love to read so much.
He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public. That statement only is fit to be made public, which you have come at in attempting to satisfy your own curiosity.
I've always had a really great time being in movies and writing music when I get home. The more creative I am, the more it feeds into other creative aspects of my life.
Writing humor in my column isn't as dangerous as performing it. If I fail in front of a live audience, the humiliation is as great as anything a human being can suffer.
Star Wars was great at the beginning and crap at the end while Star Trek has always been interesting, and the difference is in the writing, and the thematic intentions.
I started writing poetry because language was how I understood the world. It was a paradigm that made everything matter and in forms that were safe to hold what I felt.
To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones.
I don't really have any "must work withs," but I would never refuse if a celebrity or fellow musician came along who is willing to write or sing or play on a Lita song.
If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead.
I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation.
I asked Mr. Vann which O levels you need to write situation comedy for television. Mr. Vann said that you don't need qualifications at all, you just need to be a moron.
I started to write a lot of ballads that were sultry and had a Norah Jones-for-country kind of feel. I wanted to bring elements of old soul music and old country music.
Many of us write because we are readers and have grown up in a long tradition, and we want to be able to add to that extraordinary flow of interpretations of the world.
Railing in other men may be a crime, But ought to pass for mere instinct in him: Instinct he follows and no further knows, For to write verse with him is to transprose.
So remember these two things: you are talented and you are original. Be sure of that. I say this because self-trust is one of the very most important things in writing.
I love words but I don't like strange ones. You don't understand them and they don't understand you. Old words is like old friends, you know 'em the minute you see 'em.