Writing Quotes - Page 163

Take your materials from what is around you - if you see a dandelion, write about that; if it's misty, write about the mist. The materials for poetry are all about you in profusion.

Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue. When it does, it grows sweeter.

It is important for you to have a goal. You simply can't get there if you don't know where you are going. Begin to build in your mind a dream. The write it down and make your goal realistic. Aim high enough that you will have to stretch your ability and your potential to reach it.

Never let a domestic quarrel ruin a day's writing. If you can't start the day fresh, get rid of your wife.

An intellectuals weapon is writing, but sometimes people react as if it were a firearm. A writer can do a lot to change the situation, but as far as I know, no dictatorship has fallen because of a sonnet.

If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word.

There are very few good writers about art, and you either get art-fashion writing with trendy views or you get very traditional writing. Occasionally, you get people who can write in an interesting way. Really, I think in a sense art writing needs to be renewed as well. It's in a pretty bad condition.

What comics sacrifice and what lives they live - I know that most of their lives, their adult lives, they're sitting around or walking around with notebooks, writing things down. Usually they're fairly sensitive. Usually they're very bright. And that makes them poets.

There's one post-Christmas chore I love-writing thank-you letters.... Lots of companies for many reasonable reasons, I guess, have a policy against sending even Christmas cards, never mind things, at Christmastime. But our clan gets a big kick out of opening the Warner-Lambert box containing an assortment of their wares; we argue over which of the boys is to get the Union Oil Co. necktie [and] all the holiday long we play the marvelous Christmas music sent by Goodyear.... None of these things means that Forbes or Forbeses have been had. But all of us like being thought of.

I'm not really good at writing sad sappy ballads. In terms of the lyrics not matching the vibe of the music, that's kind of the way my career has gone; everyone is a little confused about it all the time.

See, I'm not the type of writer that has 400 songs in a suitcase someplace on the shelf. I'm sort of a rise-to-the-occasion-type of writer, so when I know I'm going to record, I get in the mood to write.

But what else can I do, other than to plead with you like this? Other than to write down my story, our story, to show you that what you've done . . . to make you realize that what you did wasn't fair, wasn't right.

A letter is never ill-timed; it never interrupts. Instead it waits for us to find the opportune minute, the quiet moment to savor the message. There is an element of timelessness about letter writing.

Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.

I learn so much from writing with other musicians, asking questions about their playing style and gear, and hanging out, too.

The writer's intention hasn't anything to do with what he achieves. The intent to earn money or the intent to be famous or the intent to be great doesn't matter in the end. Just what comes out.

When I write a paper, I change my notation much more than I change my concepts.

Good writing comes from good talent.

I can't understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again.

Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.

The less attention I pay to what people want and the more attention I pay to just writing the book I want to write, the better I do.

But that initial, comet-blazing-across-the-sky, Big Idea is only the beginning. Each book is composed of a mosaic of thousands of little ideas, ideas that invariably come to me at two in the morning when my alarm is set for seven.

In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature.

I love to play with language; make it do tricks, turn a word inside out to see if it's got a hidden meaning tucked away somewhere, or perhaps find that it's capable of an extra entendre or two. . . . Plotting is nothing I did, or do, naturally. It is the hardest part of the writing process. No matter how many times you plot a script successfully, the next one, representing new and uncharted territory, convinces you that you really don't know how to do it at all.

One canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period – the centuries that is, before Constantine, and two after, determine the boundary of our faith.