Writing Quotes - Page 156

When I'm writing a play I hear it like music. I use the same indications that a composer does for duration. There's a difference, I tell my students, between a semi-colon and a period. A difference in duration. And we have all these wonderful things, we use commas and underlining and all the wonderful punctuation things we can use in the same way a composer uses them in music. And we can indicate, as specifically as a composer, the way we want our piece to sound.

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.

Few persons can be made to believe that it is not quite an easy thing to invent a method of secret writing that shall baffle investigation. Yet it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve.

Writing is both mask and unveiling.

I write in order to make the little voices in my head go away. Thus far it hasn't worked.

A man is in no danger so long as he talks his love; but to write it is to impale himself on his own pothooks.

When I'm writing fiction I'm thinking, God, this is so hard - I have to make all this stuff up! I wish I were writing a nonfiction book where all the facts are laid out and I don't have to be so much at sea.

The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing.”“The better we get at getting better, the faster we will get better.”“In 20 or 30 years, you’ll be able to hold in your hand as much computing knowledge as exists now in the whole city, or even the whole world.”“The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment they can tolerate.”“The key thing about all the world’s big problems is that they have to be dealt with collectively. If we don’t get collectively smarter, we’re doomed.

In order to climb properly on big peak one must free oneself of fear. This means you must write yourself off before any big climb. You must say to yourself, I may die here.

With the possible exception of God during the writing of the Bible, every writer in history has needed an editor. So do you.

For TV I don't think I could have gotten a better part than Uncle Junior because of the intimacy of the character based on David Chase's brilliant writing.

I don't think I ever wrote a song. I can write a lot of jokes, but when I try to write lyrics they're the most direct, non-figurative words, like, 'I like you, I like you,'... and that's it, for the whole song. People would go, 'Ooh, this guy's Dylan or something.' It gives me a lot more respect for songwriters, actually.

'Thank you power' is writing down the moments that are good in your life so that you can go back and reflect on them - so you've got this sort of repository of good stuff in your past.

People think writing a children's book is something you could do in an afternoon but it's actually really hard.

I've been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning. Most of it's just whining, but every so often there'll be something I can use later: a joke, a description, a quote. It's an invaluable aid when it comes to winning arguments. 'That's not what you said on February 3, 1996,' I'll say to someone.

Consumers do not buy products. They buy product benefits.

I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber.

In playwriting, you've got to be able to write dialogue. And if you write enough of it and let it flow enough, you'll probably come across something that will give you a key as to structure. I think the process of writing a play is working back and forth between the moment and the whole. The moment and the whole, the fluidity of the dialogue and the necessity of a strict construction. Letting one predominate for a while and coming back and fixing it so that eventually what you do, like a pastry chef, is frost your mistakes, if you can.

To me to write well is to battle stereotypes. To write well is to create three-dimensional characters that seem human.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

When you write, you want fame, fortune and personal satisfaction. You want to write what you want to write and feel it's good, and you want this to go on for hundreds of years. You're not likely ever to get all these things, and you're not likely to give up writing and commit suicide if you don't, but that is -- and should be -- your goal. Anything else is kind of piddling.

Two roads diverged in a wood, I took the one less travelled I'm patient so that's one less hassle If I dream it, I can live it I've seen the light with vivid imagery I need to write with fits of energy But it's hard tryin' to get where I'm goin' Without a hint or an omen It's too late to turn around Perseverance, gotta learn it now But I'm stubborn how Am I supposed to survive this rollercoaster hurtlin' to the ground?

If you remain unsettled by a piece of writing, it means you are not watching the story from the outside; you've already taken a step toward it.

I write about African women, that's really my topic. I have no shame or qualm in it because it's a very underrepresented topic, which is part of the reason I started to write.

I don't write about my life in my column.