Writing Quotes - Page 154

Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing.... It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving speech, that supremely human gift.

I believe some people are just too damn smart to write fiction.

The great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential fact of financial science, and endless social and political problems are only accessible and only thinkable to those who have had a sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex worldwide States that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write.

In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it.

Writing the story of your own life is a bit like drilling your own teeth.

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

Why am I compelled to write? Because the writing saves me from this complacency I fear. Because I have no choice.

In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

I write everything down. I e-mail the second I think of something, or I write notes in my BlackBerry calendar. I set up reminder alerts on my phone. And I have a notebook by my bedside so I can write down any last-minute ideas.

Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.

Ministers never write or preach so well as when under the cross.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn't think I could read, much less write.

Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk-away from any open flames-to remind yourself that if you don't write daily, you will get rusty.

To write much, and to write rapidly, are empty boasts. The world desires to know what you have done, and not how you did it.

...people today are so accustomed to pretentious nonsense that they see nothing amiss in reading without understanding, and many of them at length discover that they can without difficulty write in like manner themselves and win applause for it. And so it perpetuates itself.

I was in lots of dodgy bands growing up and I always fancied myself in a band. But, you know, I was rubbish at writing music. So maybe one day I'll play a rock star, or punk rocker.

People spend a lifetime thinking abouthow they would really like to live. I asked my friends and no one seems to know very clearly. To me, it's very clear now. I wish my life could have been like the years when I was writing 'Love in the Time of Cholera.'

In the future, a new generation of artists will be writing genomes as fluently as Blake and Byron wrote verses.

I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.

Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality.

Writing is for stories to be read, books to be published, poems to be recited, plays to be acted, songs to be sung, newspapers to be shared, letters to be mailed, jokes to be told, notes to be passed, recipes to be cooked, messages to be exchanged, memos to be circulated, announcements to be posted, bills to be collected, posters to be displayed and diaries to be concealed. Writing is for ideas, action, reflection, and experience. It is not for having your ignorance exposed, your sensitivity destroyed, or your ability assessed.

A secretary is not a thing Wound by key, pulled by string. Her pad is to write in, And not spend the night in, If that's what you plan to enjoy.

All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.

L.A. kills people.' Jacaranda said. 'You're lucky you're leaving. You'll be able to write.' She looked paler, going through another depression, smoking in bed in her lilac room. The walls were the color of her veins. She was getting too thin, even for the modeling. . .Jacaranda died last winter when the flowering trees were bare. You couldn't even tell which ones once cried the purple blossoms she named herself after.