Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A mortgaged home, an empty stomach and a ragged back know no party. We will live to write the epitaphs of the old parties: "Died of general debility, old age, and chronic falsehoods."
You can't top that remark for hypocrisy or the setting for irony. It isn't the middle class who write $32,500 checks. Those who do expect something in return. They've been getting it.
The fact that I am writing to you in English already falsifies what I wanted to tell you. My subject: how to explain to you that I don't belong to English though I belong nowhere else
If what you know and what you love are the same thing, that's great. But if not, write what you love. I love history, secrets, conspiracies, action, adventure, international settings.
I always wanted to be in the world of entertainment. I just love the idea of an audience being happy with what I am doing. Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.
At some point, you have to sit down and face the page alone. At some point, the final decisions need to be yours. At some point, you have to give yourself deadlines and stick to them.
My first notebook was a Big Five tablet, given to me [at age five] by my mother with the sensible suggestion that I stop whining and learn to amuse myself by writing down my thoughts.
It's important, I think, for a writer of fiction to maintain an awareness of the pace and shape of the book as he's writing it. That is, he should be making an object, not chattering.
Sugar Ray and talked about doing some articles together or writing a book together but dealing with Sugar Ray was a lot like fighting him. He would fake you in and then he'd drop you.
I think it's important to let each thing you write teach you how to write it. You must listen to what you do. Let it be in control. I don't step in until I know what it demands of me.
Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.
I feel lucky that I even have the luxury to write about feeling lonely or feeling confused. When you think about climate change that means that we won't have an Earth to be lonely on.
There's nothing more stressful than your stomach growling. But interestingly enough, some of my best writing came when I was poor and hungry - living off water and oatmeal, mind clear.
If you think it's worth writing a book about then that means you suspect that you're not the only one. You suspect that it has something to do with the larger patterns of your culture.
A lot of TV is put together by teams, by writing staffs and several different directors. It's a great, very smart way to make television. It's worked for however long TV's been around.
First of all, all writing includes some part of the self. The relationship of the self and the other exists in writing, whether autobiographical or novel. There is a self and an other.
Jihad amongst the Muslims today has become like a taboo subject that is discussed over coffee. The one who writes and speaks about Jihad has not even spent a minute in the battlefield.
My reputation for writing quickly and effortlessly notwithstanding, I am strongly in favor of intelligent, even fastidious revision, which is, or certainly should be, an art in itself.
Blanche is written with a terrible authority, the authority that comes from artistic necessity when the writer is compelled to write by his demon, rather than by his agent or promoter.
I really enjoyed reading the writings of Fredrick Buechner, I havent read anything by him in probably a decade but about 20 years ago I read four or five books of his and it helped me.
I love the act of writing. I like the quiet, internal aspect of it. If I lost track of that, I couldn't direct the same way. I couldn't be a director for-hire; it's just not my nature.
Franz Kafka is an idea person. His books begin and end in ideas. Ideas have always been important to me in my writing. To the point that I have to be careful that they don't take over.
. . . All artists’ work is autobiographical. Any writer’s work is a map of their psyche. You can really see what their concerns are, what their obsessions are, and what interests them.
'Thank you power' is writing down the moments that are good in your life so that you can go back and reflect on them - so you've got this sort of repository of good stuff in your past.
There is no pleasure in the world like writing well and going fast. It's like nothing else. It's like a love affair, it goes on and on, and doesn't end in marriage. It's all courtship.
Myths are the prototype for all stories. When we write a story on our own it can't help but link up with all sorts of myths. Myths are like a reservoir containing every story there is.
I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there’ll be the making of a novel.
Sometimes even when the book is over I dont know whos good and whos bad. Its really more interesting, I think, to write about gray characters than it is to write about black and white.
A lot of my work comes from a place of despair or fear. I often write in order to gain some sort of control over aspects of my life or the world that seem too dark to look at directly.
Greg Trooper writes great songs, including one of my very favorite songs in the world, Little Sister. On top of all that, there's his voice - an instrument I have coveted for 15 years.
I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.
Whenever I have time, I try to get in the studio and write, whether it's for me or other artists or my catalog of music. It's definitely one of my favorite parts of the music industry.
Evolution writ large is the belief that a cloud of hydrogen will spontaneously invent extreme-ultraviolet lithography, perform Swan Lake, and write all the books in the British Museum.
I think technique can be taught but I think the only way to learn to write is to read, and I see writing and reading as completely related. One almost couldn't exist without the other.
Even though I've reached retirement age, I still plan to work - writing my investment newsletter, speaking at conferences, publishing books, and producing conferences like FreedomFest.
I know I'm not going to write as well as I used to. I no longer have the stamina to endure the frustration. Writing is frustration - it's daily frustration, not to mention humiliation.
I thought people cared about music in a deep way, so I was writing to that spirit in people and in myself. It was me, thinking I knew what was up. Youth, who else can change the world?
Plus, publishing's inherent conservatism, means that what little did get through was weighted towards the commercial end of the scale, which is not the kind of writing that excites me.
Yes, letter writing is antiquated - though there remain a few renegades who still so treasure the luxury of contemplating their lives in letters that they would rather write than call.
I try to be specific. One thought at a time. Clear. Articulate. And above all, memorable, if you can be. You'd like to write phrases that people can't forget as soon as they read them.
I try to write every day until the book is done, but the exact process depends on the story and its structure. Sometimes, if the story is more linear, I write it from beginning to end.
We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.
Between speeches and awards, you can find something to do every other week. It's hard to write. Your focus gets splintered. Once you put one thing in your calendar, that month is gone.
I, who am king of the matter I treat, and who owe an accounting for it to no one, do not for all that believe myself in all I write. I often hazard sallies of my mind which I mistrust.
We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all.
I'm one of those writers who, when writing, believes she's god-and that she hasn't bestowed free will on any of her characters. In that sense there are no surprises in any of my books.
Writers feel like a middleman, standing with pen in hand over the page. A force greater than me stands above telling me what to write. That may sound romantic, but that's how it feels.
And the wind will whip your tousled hair, The sun, the rain, the sweet despair, Great tales of love and strife. And somewhere on your path to glory You will write your story of a life.
I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation.
Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening.