Writing Quotes - Page 174

I think writing about unhappiness is probably the source of my popularity, if I have any - after all, most people are unhappy, don't you think?

If you don't want anyone to know anything about you, don't write anything.

Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials.

...It's an unmeetable level of writing. But even if it's something I feel like I can't ever attain, it doesn't crush my spirit. I figured out early on that you gotta find your own strengths and hone them rather than trying to emulate something that impresses you.

New dramatic writing has banished conversational dialogue from the stage as a relic of dramaturgy based on conflict and exchange: any story, intrigue or plot that is too neatly tied up is suspect.

Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

Don't just plan to write - write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.

The Japanese don't write in alphabetic writing; they write in pictographs. So they never became visual, they stayed in the oral world, which is, everything is part of reality. Which means that they can accept any new technology  -  it's not threatening to them, and they can still continue to maintain their traditional culture, even in the face of high technology.

I'll sit around and play my guitar; that's how I write tunes.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information.

After I found out that I was playing music and that I'd have to learn how to read and write music, I started doing that about two years later. Finally, I said, "Oh, that means what I really want to do is to be a composer." But when I was coming up in Texas, there was segregation. There was no schools to go to. I taught myself how to read and how to start writing.

On a good day I write, all day.

You write a scene, and it works or it doesn't. It's immediate.

I've always done a lot of research and stuff around the songs that I write so there are pages and pages of writing and you can kind of see these songs emerging.

I don't force it. If you don't have an idea and you don't hear anything going over and over in your head, don't sit down and try to write a song. You know, go mow the lawn...My songs speak for themselves.

I don’t like writing for comedians. I like writing for actors. The best comedians are the best actors.

When writing a novel, that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.

Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.

At first, when an idea, a poem, or the desire to write takes hold of you, work is a pleasure, a delight, and your enthusiasm knows no bounds. But later on you work with difficulty, doggedly, desperately. For once you have committed yourself to a particular work, inspiration changes its form and becomes an obsession, like a love-affair… which haunts you night and day! Once at grips with a work, we must master it completely before we can recover our idleness.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

My writing arises out of erotic impulse toward an other: it is an act of love. And I want terribly to be loved in return, as a sign that I have loved well enough.

Everything I know, I write about. My only research is what I did.

This time, we went up to Big Bear for 3-4 weeks and sequestered ourselves writing this album [ "The Black Crown"].