Writing Quotes - Page 171

My technicians are my most important tools. Once I establish a rapport with them, then they would understand me in my next film. I wouldn't have to train anyone new. I give a lot of respect to all my technicians, because I'm a technician too. I wouldn't be able to convey a feeling if the writer didn't write it well, and the cameraman didn't shoot it well.

People like me write because otherwise we are pretty inarticulate. Our articulation is our writing.

The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.

People’s good deeds we write in water. The evil deeds are etched in brass.

You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.

I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.

the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat

The better work men do is always done under stress and at great personal cost.

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand - a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods - or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

My father died and left me his blessing and his business. His blessing brought no money into my pocket, and as to his business, it soon deserted me, for I was busy writing poetry, and could not attend to law, and my clients, though they had great respect for my talents, had no faith in a poetical attorney.

A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.

I mean it's the writing, not the being read, that excites me.

As I grow old I hate the writing of letters more and more, and like getting them better and better.

I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot.

I view myself primarily as a trial lawyer who happens to be writing, as opposed to a writer who happens to be a trial lawyer, so the audience is like a jury to me.

I wrote my first book when I was 22 years old. I have a way with words and I love to write. I can write without getting writers block so I knew, it was a gift.

People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don't know anything. So write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.

Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.

Sometimes what I write on the page frightens me, so I feel free when I write, but I don't feel safe.

Writing songs is like capturing birds without killing them. Sometimes you end up with nothing but a mouthful of feathers.

And what you do is you go into where your anger is, if you're writing anger, you go into where your hatred is, if you're writing hatred. Your joy is, if you're writing joy. You find the source of the energy that draws hatred, anger, joy, etc., etc., etc. That's what you have to find. That's what you do as an actor and that's what you do as a writer. And you bring people to the page.

The process of writing a book is infinitely more important than the book that is completed as a result of the writing, let alone the success or failure that book may have after it is written . . . the book is merely a symbol of the writing. In writing the book, I am living. I am growing. I am tapping myself. I am changing. The process is the product.

If you do not hear music in your words, you have put too much thought into your writing and not enough heart.

I can't expose a human weakness on the stage unless I know it through having it myself.

Keep things informal. Talking is the natural way to do business. Writing is great for keeping records and putting down details, but talk generates ideas. Great things come from out luncheon meetings which consist of a sandwich, a cup of soup, and a good idea or two. No martinis.