Writing Quotes - Page 190

Writing is both the excursion into and the excursion out of one's life. That is the queasy paradox of the artistic life. It is the thing that, like love, removes one both painfully and deliciously from the ordinary shape of existence. It joins another queasy paradox: that life is an amazing, hilarious, blessed gift and that it is also intolerable.

But why wasn't I born, alas, in an age of Adjectives; why can one no longer write of silver-shedding Tears and moon-tailed Peacocks, of eloquent Death, of the Negro and star-enameled Night?

I write a lot of lyrics and I'm involved in the producing process, because it's like, if I'm singing it, I want it to be something that I can relate to.

I think I started writing because no one had ever told me you can write about the things you know in a musical. They don't have to come from some far off place.

Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped.

And my girl actin like a brat So when she call, I don't answer - I just write her back

I don't know what any of my songs are about. I don't sit down to write about anything. They're about whatever you want. I don't pick subjects. I just start.

The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters.

Writing cant change the world overnight, but writing may have an enormous effect over time, over the long haul.

Any asshole can write a tone-row. It takes a composer to write a tune.

What happens on “Mad Men” in terms of the acting and the writing and the directing, it’s superior. And yes, it has tremendous cache and buzz because it’s become iconic, but it also deserves all the kudos and the awards as well, because it’s a beautiful show to look at.

I think novelists, when they write their books, end up having occasionally serving a purpose and playing roles that they never really fully either intended or even understood.

I was addicted to hacking, more for the intellectual challenge, the curiosity, the seduction of adventure; not for stealing, or causing damage or writing computer viruses.

In Dogen's writing, the practical instruction, philosophy and poetry are together in one voice. People hear about his poetry, go to his work, and expect to find poetry, or they hear about his philosophy and expect to find philosophy. They look just for practical instruction and find poetry and philosophy. They can't make out the complexity of his writing, become frustrated and let him go.

No two people will ever see or feel things in the same way, Merry. The challenge is to be truthful when you write. Don't approximate. Don't settle for the easiest combination of words. Go searching instead for those that explain exactly what you think. What you feel.

Shameless actually good since it gives a kind of freedom. We consider the old, functionless shame destructive. Today, if you have a strong sense of shame you also have a strong desire to overcome it. And that's when you can write.

Because I come from the theater, I use the images of the theater and of movies a great deal when I write. I see the story in my head. I have to break down the outline of a story first. I have to know where I'm going. Usually I have a good beginning and a good ending, and then I think, "Now I have to find my way through it."

I write so much because my cat sits on my lap. She purrs so I don't want to get up. She's so much more calming than my husband.

He was breathing, which is always a good sign. As gently as I could I picked him up, placed him on the towel, wrapped it around him, and put him in my car. I drove to the emergency clinic, the cat purring on the seat beside me. “What’s his name?” the young man at the front desk asked as my towel and cat were whisked to a back room. “Uh…John Tomkins,” I said. “That’s different,” the receptionist said, writing it down. “He was a pirate,” I said. “I mean Tomkins. I don’t know about the cat. (...)

I'm always so pleased when I can get a song or be given a song that really speaks to me and I can interpret, but if given the opportunity to really write from the heart and try and bring some personality to whatever this genre would be, it was a great opportunity for me.

Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.

Now I found it in writing sentences. You can write that sentence in a way that you would have written it last year. Or you can write it in the way of the exquisite nuance that is sriting in your mind now. But that takes a lot of ... waiting for the right word to come.

Lovers of literature will look for the remains of the golden treasure in that shipwreck on the bottom of the sea of criticism.

Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism.

I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull.