Writing Quotes - Page 150

I would say "These Days." It was the title song to an album I put out, and it's really this song that you'll hear throughout the episodes and the season in the show. I write all my music, I'm an independent artist so we do it all in-house and that song embodies exactly what the title says.

During my life I have seen, known, and lost too much to be the prey of vain dread; and, as for the hope of immortality, I am as weary of that as I am of gods and kings. For my own sake only I write this; and herein I differ from all other writers, past and to come.

You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages.

Nobody reads a book to get to the middle.

I wanted to write a film and I thought the best way to do so was to train myself within the field... It was just like a cycle of people trying to make it, not making it, doing extra work, and it was pretty depressing in the end.

In civilized societies, if you are offended by a cartoon, you do not burn flags, take up guns and raid buildings, chant death to your opponents, or threaten suicide bombings. You write a letter to the editor.

I think precision in writing goes hand in hand with not trying to say everything. You try and say two-thirds, so the reader will involve himself or herself.

I went into journalism to learn the craft of writing and to get close to the world I wanted to write about - police and criminals, the criminal justice system.

Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it.

I wanted to write something from a child's viewpoint... Five of the characters I have played in movies have either been abused or became abusers, themselves, and I just kind of felt like there was a need.

When the storyteller tells the truth, she reminds us that human beings are more alike than unalike... A story is what it's like to be a human being-to be knocked down and to miraculously arise. Each one of us has arisen, awakened. We do rise.

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine ... before she realizes she's reading.

I would not recommend poetry as a career. In the first place, it's impossible in this time and place - in this culture - to make poetry a career. The writing of poetry is one thing. It's an obsession, the scratching of a divine itch, and has nothing to do with money. You can, however, make a career out of being a poet by teaching, traveling around, and giving lectures. It's a thin living at best.

To write about the monstrous sense of alienation the poet feels in this culture of polarized hatreds is a way of staying sane. With the poem, I reach out to an audience equally at odds with official policy, and I celebrate our mutual humanness in an inhuman world.

To George Gershwin, on refusinghim as a pupil: You would only lose the spontaneous quality of your melody, and end by writing bad Ravel.

As I tell my intro creative writing students, after reading someone you love, wait at least an hour before starting to write.

Because good writing in a TV cartoon is so rare, I think the animation on The Simpsons is often overlooked.

Richmond has fallen - and I have no heart to write about it... They are too many for us. Everything lost in Richmond, even our archives. Blue-black is our horizon.

Any good director creates a playground. That's what they do. They hire the right actor, open the door and let them play because stuff will happen, right then and there. The audience wants to believe that what's going on is happening for the first time, ever. That's what acting is. That's what good scene writing is.

When I write love songs, people think they're really soppy - but I see love as a consolation for the boredom of life.

He who writes distichs, wishes, I suppose, to please by brevity. But, tell me, of what avail is their brevity, when there is a whose book full of them?

Far more thought and care go into the composition of any prominent ad in a newspaper or magazine than go into the writing of their features and editorials.

Any doctor will admit that any drug can have side effects, and that writing a prescription involves weighing the potential benefits against the risks.

Don't look at the world with your hands in your pockets. To write about it you have to reach out and touch it.

You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.