Writing Quotes - Page 189

In my life there were a lot of situations where I could have been killed or some officer might have been killed chasing me, a lot of things could be different. Now, you know that's experience you can't buy. And it's there in my rearview mirror and I can refer to it in my writing. I have the experience to talk about things some people only imagine.

I do not think you should read about writing while you are writing.

I don't have any desire to retire in the sense of not doing anything. Because as long as the Lord gives me strength I want to keep writing and keep preaching. I love what I do.

It's very hard to write a song alone. It's only by jamming that you can get a song together.

Writing is one of the few careers for which you essentially train yourself, the other two major ones being juggling and pickpocketing.

We've had musical stuff in the show [South Park] forever. That's mostly because Trey's a big musical fan, and he's a great songwriter. He's been writing songs his whole life. So since the beginning, we've always put a lot of musical moments.

The first four months of writing the book, my mental image is scratching with my hands through granite. My other image is pushing a train up the mountain, and it's icy, and I'm in bare feet.

Persevere. Plan. Strategize. Focus. Breathe. Write. Let go: relax. Forgive. All this failing: take a nap.

As Bertrand Russell once wrote, two plus two is four even in the interior of the sun.

When it comes to giving advice, never do so unless you've first received a request in writing, signed by a lawyer.

When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement.

One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

I believe writers need to be chameleons, or like Meryl Streep, who can play all sorts of characters. A good writer should be able to cross gender lines and people of all social classes. So for me, writing from a male point of view would be a great challenge, that I would look forward to taking on.

Writing is a perpetual choice between a thousand expressions, none of which satisfies me, none of which, above all, satisfies me without the others. Yet I ought to know that only music permits a succession of chords.

­Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.

To avoid a future of war, crime, and bankruptcy, the individual must begin to plan his own destiny, and the best source for the necessary information comes down to us through the writings of the ancients. The greatest knowledge of all time should be available ... in a book that would be a monument, not merely a coffin.

We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all.

Always write as if you are talking to someone. It works. Don't put on any fancy phrases or accents or things you wouldn't say in real life.

When you feel sad, it's okay. It's not the end of the world. Everyone has those days when you doubt yourself, and when you feel like everything you do sucks, but then there's those days when you feel like Superman. It's just the balance of the world. I just write to feel better.

I guess you could write a good song if your heart hadn't been broken, but I don't know of anyone whose heart hasn't been broken.

Those mad at me, writing emails angrily, Im not anti-America, America is anti-me.

But it's silly to suggest the writing of poetry is something ethereal, a sort of soul-crashing, devastating emotional experience that wrings you. I have no fancy ideas about poetry. ... It doesn't come to you on the wings of a dove. It's something you have to work hard at.

Write out of love, write out of instinct, write out of reason. But always for money.