Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Topics
Authors
Professions
Quote of The Day
Picture Quotes
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
Writing Quotes - Page 487
Menu
Grid View
List View
Quote of the Day
Picture Quotes
Top 100 Inspirational Quotes
Top 100 Love Quotes
Top 100 Happiness Quotes
Popular Authors
Dr. Seuss
Mae West
Francis Of Assisi
Winston Churchill
Pope John Paul Ii
Aldous Huxley
Charles Spurgeon
Napoleon Bonaparte
Barack Obama
Heraclitus
Popular Topics
Thankful
Kings
Moving On
Quality
Orchids
Vacation
Best Friend
Experience
Friends
Car
Writing, and especially writing a novel, where you get to sit in a room by yourself with either a pen and a paper or a computer for a couple of years, is a very solitary occupation. You can read sales figures - a hundred thousand books sold, half a million books sold - but they are just numbers.
Neil Gaiman
/
Author
Book
Couple
Writing
Copy Quote
I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. Yes, I'm a writer, but I live in this world, and my writing doesn't exist on a separate level. And if people know who I am and read my books, well, good; that way, if I have something more to say, then everyone benefits.
Jose Saramago
/
Writer
Benefits
Book
Imagine
Involvement
Social
Who I Am
Writing
Writer
Good Myself Political
Everyone
Good Myself World
Books
Exist
Read
Outside
Yes
Copy Quote
When I write I don't aim to shock people, and I'm surprised when I do. But I don't think that anything that occurs in life should be omitted from art, though the artist should present it in a fashion that is artistic and not ugly. I set out to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking.
Tennessee Williams
/
Playwright
Art
Fashion
Writing
Copy Quote
Try and write straight English; never using slang except in dialogue and then only when unavoidable. Because all slang goes sour in a short time. I only use swear words, for example, that have lasted at least a thousand years for fear of getting stuff that will be simply timely and then go sour.
Ernest Hemingway
/
Author
Trying
Writing
Years
Copy Quote
I started writing little short stories and poems as soon as I learned to read and write. I think I was six years old. And then when I got to be eleven, twelve, and into my teens, I was just listening to records all the time, and I got a guitar. I started to take guitar lessons when I was twelve.
Lucinda Williams
/
Singer-Songwriter
Guitar
Thinking
Writing
Copy Quote
For those who resist the notion that the mainstream is a genre, we recommend that they browse the shelves of their local bookstore. For if the mainstream is not a genre, then it must necessarily embrace all kinds of writing: romance, adventure, horror, thriller, crime, and, yes, science fiction.
James Patrick Kelly
/
Fictioneer
Adventure
Romance
Writing
Copy Quote
After I finish writing a chapter, I'll print it out, cut it up into paragraphs, and cut away any transition sentences. Then I shuffle all the paragraphs and lay them out as they come. As I arrange and hold them next to each other, very quickly a natural structure for the chapter presents itself.
Erik Larson
/
Journalist
Natural
Next
Sentences
Shuffle
Structure
Writing
Come
After
Arrange
Away
Chapter
Itself
Cut
Each
Finish
Hold
Lay
Paragraphs
Presents
Quickly
Copy Quote
I wasn't really writing anything that I felt was worth it at the end, but then certain things sparked me as a solo writer - to be able to try new things and experiment, and ultimately challenge myself as a performer and as a songwriter and just to commit to ideas, and not be afraid to be myself.
William Beckett
/
Musician
Challenges
Ideas
Writing
Copy Quote
Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
David Foster Wallace
/
Novelist
Fiction
Fun
Writing
Copy Quote
Everyone who sits on a sofa watching 'Match of the Day' is a top soccer expert, as you know. So if you start to worry about such people reading your story and saying, 'That'd never happen' you're going to freeze up. You're writing fiction, and your characters can do whatever you need them to do.
Mal Peet
/
Author
Freeze
Reading
Soccer
Worry
Writing
Your Day Start
Day Start People
Expert
Happen
Match
Saying
Sofa
Start
Story
Copy Quote
One thing that worried me was how writers get categorized and so they end up having to write the same kind of book again and again. That is fine if it is what you want to do, but I would rather be locked in the trunk of my car with a weasel than write the same book every three years until I die.
Justin Cronin
/
Author
Book
Locked
Worried
Writing
Years
Categorized
Trunk
Weasel
Copy Quote
If you're very serious about writing it's helpful to find an agent. It's becoming more and more competitive to have your manuscript even looked at by an editor. Many companies don't accept unsolicited manuscripts anymore, so they'll pay more attention to something that comes in through an agent.
Ann M. Martin
/
Author
Attention
Editors
Writing
Copy Quote
Writing with voice is writing into which someone has breathed. It has that fluency, rhythm, and liveliness that exist naturally in the speech of most people when they are enjoying a conversation...Writing with real voice has the power to make you pay attention and understand --the words go deep.
Peter Elbow
/
Author
Real
Voice
Writing
Copy Quote
As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel, 'The Lifeboat,' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It's such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.
Karen Thompson Walker
/
Author
Beautiful
Charlotte
Combination
Debut
Night
Novel
Writing
Editor
Manuscript
Suspenseful
Copy Quote
Journalism is very much public writing, writing with an audience in mind, writing for publication, and frequently writing quickly. And I know that when I worked daily journalism it really affected my patience with literature, which I think requires reflection, and a different kind of engagement.
Achy Obejas
/
Writer
Reflection
Thinking
Writing
Copy Quote
I find that when people haven't found God and do not know the new birth and the Spirit is not on them, yet they have the ancient impulse to worship something. If they're not educated they kill a chicken and put a funny thing on their head and dance around. If they are educated they write poetry.
Aiden Wilson Tozer
/
Author
Funny Things
People
Writing
Copy Quote
My writing model is my mother, who is a writer as well. She always valued clarity and simplicity above all else. If someone doesn't understand what you're writing, then everything else you do is superfluous. Irrelevant. If any thoughtful, curious reader finds what I do impenetrable, I've failed.
Malcolm Gladwell
/
Journalist
Mother
Thoughtful
Writing
Copy Quote
A movie is a creative process from its conception, through its writing, to its execution, to the editing. I think with the best films there is some kind of contribution from one person all the way through that. The best films are made by people who write, direct, and edit, so there's continuity.
Simon Pegg
/
Actor
Editing
Thinking
Writing
Copy Quote
There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
/
Essayist
Art
Book
Writing
Copy Quote
You can't write about people out of textbooks, and you can't use jargon. You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence.
Katherine Anne Porter
/
Journalist
Children
Writing
Years
Copy Quote
If I'm not in an environment where I can record, it's great to be able to write something down, to be able to know how to do that, to be able to write notation. You grab a piece of paper and there it is. It's the cheapest recording equipment you can buy: a piece of manuscript paper and a pencil!
John Petrucci
/
Guitarist
Pieces
Records
Writing
Copy Quote
I think that I have grown a lot as an artist. I have been writing about my experiences of love and overcoming the struggles that I have faced in the music industry. I have so much more to tell my fans, and I know so much more about myself. It is crazy how much I have grown over these past years.
Jessica Sanchez
/
Singer
Crazy
Struggle
Writing
Copy Quote
There are instances where lines in my work are borrowed or stolen from sources, mainly from books, or they become my own versions. A lot of the writing is my own, too. But if someone were to take each drawing and trace it back to its source, most of them could be traced back to a book or a text.
Raymond Pettibon
/
Artist
Book
Drawing
Writing
Copy Quote
As usual, the note occupied less than a page and included neither salutation nor closing, Uncle Hal's opinion being that since the letter had a direction upon it, the intended recipient was obvious, the seal indicated plainly who had written it, and he did not waste his time in writing to fools.
Diana Gabaldon
/
Author
Uncles
Letters
Usual
Writing
Copy Quote
I use poetry to explain myself to myself. It is a way of investigating who you really are, what you feel, what survives the pressure of writing. There are a lot of things that you can't write down because they aren't true. You can only put down what holds water at the time that you are doing it.
Jonathan W. Galassi
/
Editor
Water
Writing
Copy Quote
I looked at myself, and I just said, well, you know, I can sing but I'm not the greatest singer in the world. I can play guitar very well, but I'm not the greatest guitar player in the world... And so I said, well, if I'm going to project an individuality, it's going to have to be in my writing.
Bruce Springsteen
/
Musician
Guitar
Player
Writing
Copy Quote
There are many people who get beat up, who suffer, who are victimized, and then they sit down to write and they write crap. How many of these graphic novels over the years are from really talented people? Most of them actually, if you look at them, are self-pitying confessionals about "poor me".
Jules Feiffer
/
Cartoonist
People
Suffering
Writing
Copy Quote
Well, [bluntness in songwriting]'s a lot cheaper than therapy.... There's been a lot of things going on for the past 10 years that I just never really confronted, or used metaphors to do so. This time out I wanted to make sure that everyone knows what I'm talking about and where I'm coming from.
Brent Smith
/
Singer-Songwriter
Past
Talking
Writing
Copy Quote
Ryan Stout, a straight-arrow-looking kind of guy, shocks the crowd into laughter with his inventive interplay between innocence and a jarringly twisted point of view. He goes from loony to weirdly logical. With him, it’s more than clever writing; his comedy is based on clear and clever thinking.
Ben Fong-Torres
/
Journalist
Clever
Laughter
Writing
Copy Quote
I should have asked for credit - but he has no idea how amazing it is that a character that was written as a boy can be equally written for a girl. It's like you said, just write a character as if it were a man, and then turn it and make it into a woman. It's like, we're human beings, after all.
Karla Souza
/
Girl
Character
Writing
Copy Quote
A lot of documentaries have been made very quickly, but I think they're like frogs in an ecosystem: They're harbingers. Film is always two or three years behind, because it takes so long to write a script, get financing, and get it made. It just takes a while. But I think it's coming. It has to.
Alexander Payne
/
Film Director
Long
Thinking
Writing
Copy Quote
The books that I do, the stories I write - I'm glad I'm able to do them, but they will quickly be swallowed up by the sands of time. Sometimes it frustrates me that I'm not able to do bigger, more important, more significant things. I guess you have to be content to do whatever it is you can do.
Jim Woodring
/
Cartoonist
Book
Significant Things
Writing
Copy Quote
Men have such a good opinion of themselves, of their mental superiority and intellectual depth; they believe themselves so skilled in discerning the true from the false, the path of safety from those of error, that they should be forbidden as much as possible the perusal of philosophic writings.
Al-Ghazali
/
Theologian
Men
Believe
Writing
Copy Quote
I have two wonderful, supportive and very practical parents who were like, you're really talented and really creative. You should be a lawyer because there's a safe path there. And I knew that I was never going to be a lawyer. And I knew that I wanted to make movies, and I wanted to write shows.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
/
Composer
Parent
Two
Writing
Copy Quote
This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it 'to the editor who can appreciate my work' and it has simply come back stamped 'Not at this address'. Just keep looking for the right address.
Barbara Kingsolver
/
Novelist
Appreciate
Editors
Writing
Copy Quote
There is a big difference between wanting to say you wrote a book, and actually writing one. Many people think they want to write, even though they find crafting sentences and paragraphs unpleasant. They hope there is a way to write without writing. I can tell you with certainty there isn’t one.
Scott Berkun
/
Author
Book
Thinking
Writing
Copy Quote
You write a screenplay and then everybody is going to want to get in on it and we have to figure that out. I've written three screenplays that are at studios and I still haven't been making them yet so there is always something that is either going to trip something up or maybe get another pass.
Craig Brewer
/
Film Director
Three
Want
Writing
Copy Quote
When I start to write and record a track, I always think about where it is supposed to take place, what kind of room that is, and what kind of atmosphere it should have. Also how it should be performed, and by what kind of musicians or vocalists. I work in a very theatrically minded sort of way.
Karin Dreijer Andersson
/
Vocalist
Thinking
Track
Writing
Copy Quote
I would be writing and trying to write like Joan Didion. Or if I was reading Raymond Carver. You know, strong stylists. But that's how you find your voice, is imitating other people. So things like that didn't embarrass me, because I thought, well, that's how it goes. That's how everyone learns.
David Sedaris
/
Humorist
Reading
Strong
Writing
Copy Quote
What avail all your scholarly accomplishments and learning, compared with wisdom and manhood? To omit his other behavior, see whata work this comparatively unread and unlettered man wrote within six weeks. Where is our professor of belles-lettres, or of logic and rhetoric, who can write so well?
Henry David Thoreau
/
Author
Education
Men
Six
Writing
Copy Quote
I've never written for anybody else. For me, it was a challenge. I write for me. I don't write for anybody else. And what was good about it was that I was writing for somebody I knew. I knew what my mother thinks and how she feels. So it was finding that creative spirit to write about my mother.
Teddy Pendergrass
/
Singer-Songwriter
Mother
Thinking
Writing
Copy Quote
The writing is therapeutic for me, it's an introverted process, I'm really inside my head. It's a really obsessive process. The live show, though, is the opposite. It's an extroverted process. It pushes me to connect with people, and so it pulls me out of my head and just pulls me out of myself.
Fernando Torres
/
Soccer Player
Opposites
People
Writing
Copy Quote
I was four or five, and my mother gave me a big black tablet, because I kept complaining that I was bored. She said, "Then write something. Then you can read it." In fact, I had just learned to read, so this was a thrilling kind of moment. The idea that I could write something - and then read it!
Joan Didion
/
Author
Ideas
Mother
Writing
Copy Quote
In a sense, all actors are character actors, because we're all playing different characters. But a lot of the time - and I don't know, because I'm not a writer - but writers a lot of times write second- and third-tier characters better than they write primary characters. I guess they're more fun.
Dennis Farina
/
Actor
Character
Fun
Writing
Copy Quote
A lot of people, myself included, are excited about blogging and stuff like that, citizen journalism, but I do remind people that no matter how excited we are, there's no substitute for professional writing, no substitute for professional editing, and no substitute for professional fact-checking.
Craig Newmark
/
Entrepreneur
Blogging
Editing
Journalism
People
Writing
Citizen
Substitute
Included
Remind
Copy Quote
Springsteen on that record started writing less about having your wind in your hair and turning the radio up and more about being dragged down by adult things. Regular people trying to get ahead. A little less mythical and romantic, and more real. It's a really spectacular record for that reason.
Craig Finn
/
Singer
Hair
Real
Writing
Copy Quote
When you wrote a song way back in the day, you were writing material to play live. And you would buy the CD at the shows if you like the show. You may not listen to the CD, you might just throw it in the back of your car and let it warp in the sun. The main thing was you saw the song at the show.
Travis Morrison
/
Cds
Song
Writing
Copy Quote
I feel I'm able to get rid of any demons lurking in my psyche through my writing, which leaves me free to create all of this and to enjoy our family life, stepping away from all the fictional traumas and the dramas. If I write about family in crisis, then I won't have to live through it, I guess.
Jodi Picoult
/
Author
Able
Crisis
Drama
Family Life
Lurking
Writing
Life Family Me
Demons
Dramas
Fictional
Leaves
Psyche
Rid
Stepping
Copy Quote
It is not possible to redefine marriage. Marriage is the union between a man and a woman, has been historically, remains so. It is Alice in Wonderland territory, Orwellian almost, for any Government of any political persuasion to seek to come along and try to re-write the lexicon. It will not do.
Roger Gale
/
British Politician
Men
Political
Writing
Copy Quote
I paraphrase Aristotle: If you want to be comical, write about people to whom the audience can feel superior; if you want to be tragical, write about at least one person to whom the audience is bound to feel inferior, and no fair having human problems solved by dumb luck or heavenly intervention.
Kurt Vonnegut
/
Writer
Dumb
People
Writing
Copy Quote
‹ Prev
1
2
...
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
...
605
606
Next ›
Stay Connected
facebook
twitter
pinterest
instragram
App & Tools
Get Daily Quotes of QuoteForever App
Make Your Picture Quotes, Download and Share
Popular Topic Tags
Equality
Quiet People
Morning
Health
Architecture
Friendship
Mother's Day
Education
Wisdom
Marriage
Smile
Thank You
Your Beautiful
Teen
Intelligence
Leadership
Heartbreak
Inspirational
Wise
Hilarious
Share This Page