Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Most of my stuff is just a series of false leads. I'll approach a story as a subject and then make a whole bunch of different runs at the lead. They're all good writing but they don't connect. So I end up having to string leads together.
The reason I'm here today, the reason I own a brand new Harley-Davidson motorcycle and the reason I have a big log cabin and I got cars and all kinds of stuff is because I'm a writer and writers own everything. So you learn how to write.
Great authors, when they write about causes, adduce not only those they think are true but also those they do not believe in, provided they have some originality and beauty. They speak truly and usefully enough if they speak ingeniously.
There's also a lot of stuff that's not really good that gets written so I say to people who are excited about writing for the first time that if you think you have it, go for it because there are people that achieve it and don't have it.
Throughout my childhood, my parents dropped me off at a multitude of therapists' offices in hopes that I'd avoid growing up to be the kind of asshole who writes books about them. Also because it was sometimes easier than finding a nanny.
Therefore, even if you write a letter for a blind man or you must go and sit and listen, or you take the mail for him, or you visit somebody or bring a flower to somebody... it is never too small, for this is our love of Christ in action
When I was writing some of songs for the record in Galapagos it was the feeling of being there I wanted to evoke more than anything. I remember hearing all the parts of the songs in my mind when I was walking around over the lava fields.
My dad was an editor and a writer, and that's really where I would have liked to have gone. But the genetic link was not intact there, so I wound up going into business. But I love to write, still. I'm not a great writer, but I enjoy it.
I unplug the phone and close the door and just stick with it. I don't ever go out for lunch and I don't take vacations. I like to be awake when no one else is: either just before dawn in the morning or late, late at night. Silence helps.
I wrote a little autobiography about how luck has to do with everything. It's called "My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business." A publisher came to me and said write a book so I did. I wanted to call it "Everybody Else Has Got a Book."
I tend to write about love because I'm always thinking about it. I think a lot though and struggle with overanalyzing. Way over. That's the thing, I feel like I do that a lot and then finally when I stop thinking, that's when it happens.
When people have no interest in a subject, it's very hard to get them to laugh about it. If I had to write ten jokes about potholders, I don't think I could do it. But I could write ten jokes about Catholicism in the next twenty minutes.
What I would do is I would just remember the scene and I'd go home and I'd write out the scene from memory. And anything I didn't remember I would just fill in the blanks myself and then go and give it to a classmate and then we'd do it.
I think of poetry as a very inclusive term. Still, it's interesting that people want to make the distinction. I love the magazine Double Room for that reason (contributors have to write about their ideas on the prose poem/flash fiction).
I'm often asked how I write books, but I don't think my approach is suitable for everyone. If I walked into a creative writing class, all I could say to them was 'I tend to make it up as I go along.' I'm not sure that's brilliant advice.
When I write now I do not invent situation, characters, or actions, but rather structures and discursive forms, textual groupings which are combined according to secret affinities among themselves, as in architecture or the plastic arts.
everyone who is human has something to express. Try not expressing yourself for twenty-four hours and see what happens. You will nearly burst. You will want to write a long letter, or draw a picture, or sing, or make a dress or a garden.
I made myself a rule: write out of love. And when you love somebody, you have to tell the truth about who they are - not the cute "truth" in your head of who they are, the one where you did everything right and they did everything wrong.
If someone says something unpleasant, I can't say it doesn't smart a bit. It always does. Someone can take a really nasty swipe if they want because it kind of feels powerful for a person to write in a paper and get that thing out there.
It's often women who are writing leading roles for women. Most of the stuff that comes my way is not actually about women. I'm just asked to be a supporting player in a story about a man, and I, frankly, was not interested in doing that.
I strive for what you do find in Shakespeare's work - that there is a definite humanity and a definite character behind the writing in the sonnets, and it's very real because it's so deeply personal. I try to aspire to that in what I do.
It's not like I'm anti-China. I just think it's ridiculous that we allow them to do what they're doing to this country, with the manipulation of the currency, that you write about and understand, and all of the other things that they do.
I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.
Those whimpering Stateside young people will wake up on the Day of Judgment condemned to worse fates than these demon-fearing Indians, because, having a Bible, they were bored with it - while these never heard of such a thing as writing.
A guitar for me is pretty much strictly in the context of writing songs for my band, coming up with ideas with my band, and then being able to perform those songs as best as I can on stage - that's what the guitar for me has always been.
I spent a lot of time on Diane Arbus film, not only writing it, but running around talking through various production issues. All this crud, and then it didn't happen. There's a lot of time-wasting stuff that happens in life with movies.
I love music. I think music is a big inspiration; I listen to it a lot when I'm writing. I really love cinematic music. A lot of the time, I make playlists for my characters when I act. I also make playlists for the scripts that I write.
I've always been interested in how fast-moving our identity is and that I've never been able to pin down who I truly am. That inspires me to write, because I feel like that cements me a bit, in that I find my identity in being an artist.
I'm just having fun making jokes and writing books. But you see me once a year, I come on when I have a new book out, but basically, I've got my nose to the grindstone and I'm doing what I'm supposed to do in life, which is make stories.
I would assume that there is a greater amount of joy for you in being able to write and help produce your own stuff and make a decent living, but not get rich versus always doing the other stuff that you don’t write, and make more money.
I think I am less self-assured when I write English than I would be if I were writing in my first language. I have to test each sentence over and over to be sure that it's right, that I haven't introduced some element that isn't English.
Sending a handwritten letter is becoming such an anomaly. It's disappearing. My mom is the only one who still writes me letters. And there's something visceral about opening a letter - I see her on the page. I see her in her handwriting.
People have said, 'Why don't you make your own company like Chan-wook Park has his own company,' but my head is full of writing and directing and I don't feel like I want to run a company. That's not really within my personality as well.
Now I'm fortunate to have a good band in CA, and play many solo gigs as well. My point is that I stopped playing in bands and played solo for four years, to get back into the groove and pulse of writing and singing and who I am on stage.
I think whatever an artist does, it just has to be quality and good. I think the way Kanye's doing what he's doing with the Auto-Tune is actually creative because he just writes good melodies. He just writes good songs. He's just gifted.
If you write what you know about, you will always be on safe ground. I am very edgy and nervous about going into territories I know nothing about. That's why you don't find much high finance, group sex, or yachting parties in my stories.
Got good news and bad news for you, Mr. President. The good news is that Chief Justice John Roberts just saved your legacy and, perhaps, your presidency by writing for the Supreme Court majority to rule health care reform constitutional.
There's a feeling that you get when you write songs where... it feels like it's destined to do something. Then sometimes you get that feeling with a song and it never goes anywhere, that happens all the time too, so you never really know.
It really made me nervous to write about it [Holocaust] and to approach it, because I was nervous about how to do it respectfully, and I was also thinking about how I could add something new to something that had already been so explored.
I would go into periods of depression in my life, and I would feel so alone. I felt that there was no one who understood how I felt, either on TV or in music, and writing really helped me change what I thought and how I felt about myself.
After I won the Pulitzer, there was this sense of, 'OK, that's enough for you. Now go away.' What I wanted was to keep writing, keep working. But no one would produce anything of mine they didn't think would be as big as ''night, Mother.'
A common and usually unfortunate answer is “Write about what you know.” Nothing can be more limiting to the imagination, nothing is quicker to turn on the psyche's censoring devices and distortion systems, than trying to write truthfully.
You don't go to other books and take little pieces because although say a romantic scene may have been many times before all the details of who it is, where it is, are so intertwined in that text that it's easier to write it from scratch.
I often tell people to stop being afraid of writing bad poetry, or bad anything. I think that a lot of times, when people claim that they have writer's block, or that they get stuck, it's just because they're scared of writing bad things.
You have to create the space for the possibility of people speaking as they do. If writing is supposed to lead us in any way or educate or suggest other ways of being, it can't do so by simply reflecting what's considered to be realistic.
I write about things that tear me apart, and it's all very personal to me. It's funny to hear people disassemble the lyrics. If they get it wrong, it almost means more to me, because it's morphed into something that is meaningful to them.
When I submitted samples, I had only written stories to give myself something to draw. I was told, "The art is good, but not quite professional yet. But, I like the writing." I've been a writer for almost a half a century. It's very cool.
I write because it is while I'm writing that I feel most connected to why we're here. I write because silence is a heavy weight to carry. I write to remember. I write to heal. I write to let the air in. I write as a practice of listening.
The amount of response I get, in both a negative and a positive context, is completely related to the amount of books I sell, I think. It seems to have nothing to do with what I'm writing, but what degree of success I'm perceived to have.
I don't believe in writer's block. Think about it - when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn't it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer's block is having too much time on your hands.