Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
So far as good writing goes, the use of the exclamation mark is a sign of failure. It is the literary equivalent of a man holding up a card reading LAUGHTER to a studio audience.
I don't write on topics that require a lot of urgency. But in 'Stiff,' I wanted to change people's hearts about organ donation. Whenever I get a chance, I try to talk about that.
There must be something unique about man because otherwise, evidently, the ducks would be lecturing about Konrad Lorenz, and the rats would be writing papers about B. F. Skinner.
When we finished the tour we had been writing together for a year. We moved forward from there and have just now finished our record. We're having a new record out in the Spring.
There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.
If you gather a lot of stuff, then you write it, write in scenes with dialogue. Somewhere in the middle, rising from all this research like strong metal towers, is your opinions.
My primary motivation for writing is to communicate my perceptions and insights into the human condition, in a way that may provide understanding, comfort, and company to others.
Opinionated writing is always the most difficult... simply because it involves retaining in the cold morning-after crystal of the printed word the burning flow of molten feeling.
When I was writing this new bunch of songs, I was singing a lot lower, because they were more intimate in a way. I had to come up with a way to frame the music that was intimate.
If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.
I write at all different times. I write in my bed, I write at the table. I need to get it together. I'm working on a book and working, and just jam it in whenever it makes sense.
Doing graphic novels is cool! It's fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.
When I write a song, I tap into the emotion and the feeling and then I use the emotion to write the words. It's the opposite when I act. I use the words and tap into the emotion.
The next thing most like living one's life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing.
You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.
Anyone who has a choice and doesn't choose to write is a fool. The work is hard, the perks are few, the pay is terrible, and the product, when it's finally finished, is pure joy.
It pains me even now, even a million years later, to write about such human misbehaviour. A million years later, I feel like apologizing for the human race. That’s all I can say.
I do not believe writers should read reviews of their own books, and I do not. If one is not careful one is soon writing to please reviewers and not their audience or themselves.
What I'm doing in writing has been thoroughly and exhaustively explored in other fields like visual art, music, and cinema, yet somehow it's never really been tested on the page.
I tend to keep my ideas in my head. When I write something down in a notebook it's never centralized. There are too many notebooks floating around, but maybe that's a good thing.
The act of writing for the slave constituted the act of creating a public, historical self, not only the self of the individual author but also the self, as it were, of the race.
Whenever I'm on tour and I'm in my hotel room and I'm writing and playing my guitar, I go in the bathroom and I record whatever I'm writing in there. It's just what I love to do.
In the earlier days I did most of the song writing by myself, and I got to a place in my life where I felt it was necessary to go outside my box and get some outside inspiration.
I do not think men have more talent. There are a great many women in the arts; novelists, painters, sculptors, poets-but the proportion is far lower in the field of song writing.
You really write the books you want to write. You can't take into consideration anything that anybody has said about you in the past, or what they'll say about you in the future.
The importance is getting to something truthful and in that moment can only be in that moment. I don't like to use the word "improvise," but it's a continual writing of the film.
My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.
It's rather useless to write a gripping narrative with nothing in it but climate change because novels are always about people even if they purport to be about rabbits or robots.
When I'm writing something, if there's a part that's good for me, then I'll play it. Otherwise, I don't. And I notice that there are less and less parts for me in my own writing.
We're kinda always writing, so it's like we're always thinking about what's next, so that'd be a yes. We're always constantly wanting to get onto the next thing or the new thing.
Im writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and Im very greedy, and I really enjoy it!
You and you alone are the only person that can live the life that writes the story that you were meant to tell. And the world needs your story because the world needs your voice.
I remember those days right after I graduated from college. All I had to do was wake up in the morning and think about writing songs. It's not like that anymore, needless to say.
I always keep myself busy. I'm writing. Or I'm creating something. Or I'm doing stuff with the kids. I'm up incredibly early in the morning; I go to bed incredibly late at night.
If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not - and the odds are against it - go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper - write.
All good writing is built one good line at a time. You build a novel the same way you do a pyramid. One word, one stone at a time, underneath a full moon while the fingers bleed.
There will always be some kid who's the new Kurt Cobain writing great lyrics and singing from his soul. The problem is they're not marketing that anymore or putting it out there.
People who work on the user interface side need to have empathy as a key characteristic. But if you are writing device drivers you don't really need to understand humans so well.
I fear I shall never be...good for anything in this world, but composing airs, building towers, forming gardens, collecting old Japan, and writing a journey to China or the Moon.
Writing a song doesn't heal things. Even if the song comes up with a solution, it's still only a theory. Going out and living my lyrics is a whole other deal. That takes courage.
When writing a novel, that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.
Every essay - the subject matter of every essay - is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.
I go in for what is known in the trade as 'light writing' and those who do that - humorists they are sometimes called - are looked down upon by the intelligentsia and sneered at.
Kids love to be silly, they love to laugh, so I think it was natural for my kids to like the sort of books that I write - and it's the only kinds of books I'm capable of writing.
When I was young, I kept a diary for about 10 years and I had to write in it every day. Even on days when nothing seemed to happen, I made myself think of something to put in it.
A lot of my songs are fantasy. I can dream up all kinds of things. That's the kind of world I live in. It's very sort of flamboyant, and that's the kind of way I write. I love it
You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.
You have to give your art everything you can - I don't mean only writing, but studying other poets and poetics, thinking, reading what poets have written other than their poetry.
I feel like I want to write some songs and I don't know how to go about doing it. Usually it's the lyrics that are a problem, and I think I am not really cut out to be a lyricist.
The kind of poetry I write, lyric poetry, I think is really concerned with intimacy, with mystery. That needn't be religious mystery, there are mysteries to do with everyday life.