Writing Quotes - Page 230

Music has seven letters, writing has twenty-six notes

I think I am probably in love with silence, that other world. And that I write, in some way, to negotiate seriously with it.

All of the guys love to take serious topics and go for it; we're not writing a whole lot of love songs. With 'Sacrificed Sons,' we had some sensitivity there about how we'd present it. I remember there was a lot of discussion about the kind of words that would be used and how direct we wanted to be.

I think the greatest truths, the ones that you find in every culture that has any sort of history of reflection of writing, the greatest truth is that there's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. That's the way Shakespeare put it. But you get basically the same idea from Buddha, from the Bhagavad Gita in India, and from the Stoics in ancient Greece and Rome.

Just write about what bites you and damn the rest.

In writing advertising it must always be kept in mind that the customer often knows more about the goods than the advertising writers because they have had experience in buying them.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think—nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.

Writers don't need love; all they require is money.

There are a lot of great jokes you can sit down and write, but that's just a written joke, versus the comedy of the situation. Ideally, you're pulling as much comedy out of the situation as you can.

When I was writing The Shadow of the Glen I got more aid than any learning could have given me from a chink in the floor of the old Wicklow house where I was staying, that let me hear what was being said by the servent girls in the kitchen.

Where does a man get inspiration to write a song like that? Well, he gets it from the landlady once a month.

Some directors expect you to do everything; write, be producer, psychiatrist. Some just want you to die in a tragic accident during the shooting so they can get the insurance.

I love it when the dark bottle of night spills out, and the Moon writes in chalk about us.

A literary agent is nothing but a cheap salesman (or woman); while a writer is a cheap salesman (or woman) who also has to actually write the books.

I've sold too many books to get good reviews anymore. There's a lot of jealousy, because [reviewers] think they can write a good novel or a best-seller and get frustrated when they can't. I've learned to despise them.

And in Hollywood, you know, everyone is an expert. Most of them are expert editors. They can't direct, they can't write, they can't act, but, by God, they all think they can edit.

I don't write anything that I haven't lived. In terms of integrity, you have to write what you live. And if you write beyond what you live, it is theory. And theory is not helpful. It is just not.

The writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity.

He [Mencken] was an autodidact, with all the misplaced confidence and all the astonishing gaps that characterize that breed. Not many of us would venture to write a book about democracy without ever having read de Tocqueville, nor embark on a translation of Nietzsche with only a sketchy knowledge of German.

God have mercy on the sinner Who must write with no dinner, No gravy and no grub, No pewter and no pub, No bellyand no bowels, Only consonants and vowels.

One must be ruthless with one's own writing or someone else will be.

I began writing with a Michael Buble mentality. I think he's fantastic, and it's the perfect music for any date night, ever.

All experience is memory, and so everything you write about is from memory-unless you're writing about typing.

The worst advice a young writer can get is "Write what you know." Imagination is more important than experience.