Writing Quotes - Page 105

What can't be said can be written. Because writing is a silent act, a labor from the head to the hand.

I don't read a lot of the sports, because I think people sometimes either build it up, or you have this guy that hates sports that is going to write bad about it, so I figure I'm not going to read it. Because I'm not going to let him put an idea into my head.

If you're gonna write, for God in heaven's sake, try to get naked. Try to write the truth. Try to get underneath all the sham, all the excuses, all the lies that you've been told.

If you wait until you got time to write a novel, or time to write a story, or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read - if you wait for the time, you will never do it. ‘Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week.

I don't write with any audience in mind. I just write. I take a chance on the audience. That's what I did originally, and I think it's worked--in the sense that I find there is an audience.

If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it.

There is a problem in America. An Irish or Polish American can write a story and it's an American story. When a Black American writes a story, it's called a Black story. I take exception to that. Every artist has articulated to his own experience. The problem is that some people do not see Blacks as Americans.

I began to read the Holy Scriptures upon my knees, laying aside all other books, and praying over, if possible, every line and word...I would be so overpowered with a sense of God's Infinite Majestey, that I would be contrained to throw myself on the ground, and offer my soul as a blank in His hands, to write on it what He pleased.

I have an object, a task, let me say the word, a passion. The profession of writing is a violent and almost indestructible one.

Writing music is not so much inspiration as hard work.

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

Writing eases my suffering . . . writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.

What is easy to read has been difficult to write. The labour of writing and rewriting, correcting and recorrecting, is the due exacted by every good book from its author, even if he knows from the beginning exactly what he wants to say. A limpid style is invariably the result of hard labour, and the easily flowing connection of sentence with sentence and paragraph with paragraph has always been won by the sweat of the brow.

Most people write off their longing for friends and family as so many losses in their lives, when they should count the fact that their heart is able to long so hard and to love so much as among their greatest blessings.

I write to try to find out who I am. One of my main themes is manliness. I think I'm trying to figure out what manliness really is.

The only difference between men and women is that women are able to create new little human beings in their bodies while simultaneously writing books, driving tractors, working in offices, planting crops - in general, doing everything men do.

Actually, I never tell for whom my songs are written. It's a kind of superstition! I started writing songs for not having the courage to say certain things in people's faces and started to put these feelings on paper... Over the years, became a mania and then I never talk about for whom they are made.

The reason you write [songs] is because there's something you want to say that is important to you - enough to go through all the torture of writing.

If you write great songs with meaning and emotion, they will last for ever because songs are the key to everything.

The military is a very cool world to write about. I went down to Ft. Benning, Ga., for military training, and I learned a lot about soldiers and officers and why they joined up and what their life has been like.

Actors are good liars; writers are good liars with good memories.

People aren't interested in you. They're interested in themselves

I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.

Night time is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep.

There's nothing personal in it [THE SKRIKER]. I'm not ever inclined with any of the plays to say, This is about that, because plays are about the whole event that they are. . . . I was certainly wanting to write a play about damage - damage to nature and damage to people, both of which there's plenty of about. To that extent, I was writing a play about England now.