Writing Quotes - Page 212

Mentally, I write myself a little story. Of course, sometimes you have a song that says, "Do that." My best example is Singin' in the Rain. Arthur Freed had insisted that the song should be in the picture, but he was very anxious about it.

Don't tear up the page and start over again when you write a bad line-try to write your way out of it. Make mistakes and plunge on. Writing is a means of discovery, always.

Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.

If someone can write great music... Paul McCartney is a genius. He's so prolific. All we should do is bow down to Paul McCartney.

Writing [is] a form of prayer.

Anytime you put yourself in a creative box, it's going to stifle you; it's not conducive to the writing or recording process.

When I start my class I ask the students to write their signatures on pieces of paper and put them on a table. I have them look at them, and I point out, "They're all different, aren't they? That's you, that's you, that's you, that's you."

I don't understand blogs. People used to write to make money, no? You didn't give it away. I have nothing against blogs. I don't have a problem with them. But it's like, 'What are you doing? Why aren't you working?

When I write, it is always the melody that comes first, and it just happens to be the case that the most beautiful tunes are sad, and the lyrics follow the mood of the melody.

They needed someone to write a script of The Great Gatsby very quickly for the movie they were making. I took this job so I'd be sure to have some dough to support my family.

I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil. I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow.

I suppose half of writing is overcoming the revulsion you feel when you sit down to it.

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored.

Waiting for the German verb is surely the ultimate thrill.

You write some material, go up on stage and try it out; go back home and throw it in the trash can. And the next day do it again.

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.

It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.

Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.

To imagine yourself inside another person...is what a story writer does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose.

I love people, and I love to be with people and to make music with people, but my natural state is to revert back to being by myself in my house, which is cool because thats where I practice and write and listen and study.

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?

If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.