Writing Quotes - Page 144

Once the grammar has been learned, writing is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say.

Your writing is never as good as you hoped; but never as bad as you feared.

All I had was the will and the love for music. I couldn't read music or write it. No connections, no car, no money, no bankroll, no clothes, no nothing.

I wish I could be like Shaw who once read a bad review of one of his plays, called the critic and said: 'I have your review in front of me and soon it will be behind me.'

I trust that a graduate student some day will write a doctoral essay on the influence of the Munich analogy on the subsequent history of the twentieth century. Perhaps in the end he will conclude that the multitude of errors committed in the name of Munich may exceed the original error of 1938.

It is easy for men to write and talk like philosophers, but to act with wisdom, there is the rub!

I was always cutting words. I even would write my jokes in my notebook. I still do this, almost like a poem.

I chart a little first-list of names, rough synopsis of chapters, and so on. But one daren't overplan; so many things are generated by the sheer act of writing.

If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they're the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not.

The most difficult novel I have had to write in terms of just getting it done was The Vampire Lestat. It took a year to write.

Creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.

I don't really think that writers, even great writers, are prophets, or sages, or Messiah-like figures; writing is a lonely, sedentary occupation and a touch of megalomania can be comforting around five on a November afternoon when you haven't seen anybody all day.

You can't be a good writer without being a good thinker.

We also write to heighten our own awareness of life... We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection... We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it...to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely... When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking... I feel I lose my fire and my color.

CEMETERY, n. An isolated suburban spot where mourners match lies, poets write at a target and stone-cutters spell for a wager.

I do not write, I build.

When you start writing the magic comes when the characters seem to take on a life of their own and write the words for themselves.

Show people your stuff, listen carefully to their responses, but ultimately don't value anyone's opinion above your own. Be influenced by writers you dislike as well as writers you like. Read their stuff to figure out what's wrong. Find a balance between the confidence that allows you continue, and the self-critical facility that enables you to improve. Get the balance wrong on either side, and you're screwed.

The best parts about writing a show are [its] first, second and 10th anniversaries. Everything else is relative levels of hell.

Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

When a woman writes you a poem, she spends time with the gods on your behalf.

I've been able to tour because of my music and I've learned a lot about myself while on the road. I think some of the imagery of my writing are snapshots of where I've been and my feelings about the world.

I started freestyling with friends about eight or nine years ago. I started writing also around the same time, but didn't meet blockhead until about '94. I started making beats not until about '96.

Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go.

I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.