Writing Quotes - Page 241

I am asking you all not to be nettled with me for not answering your letter in spanish I read spanish very well but I don't write it. The image of Stanley Dixon sitting and pondering is one of the rewards of sea turtle research, and a thing I shall often sit and ponder.

All writing is garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try and put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs.

That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing.

To a chemist, nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist; he must abandon the subjective line; he must know that dungheaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.

The whole idea of interviews is in itself absurd - one cannot answer deep questions about what one's life was like - one writes novels about it.

I have no education, I have no academic background in painting or in music, but I write music and I compose music and I write and I sell paintings, and my rule is, well, they can't arrest me.

Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.

For me, writing historical fiction is all about finding a balance between reading, traveling, looking, imagining, and dreaming.

Everywhere I go, I meet people ready for change. People who are fed up with the exhaustion that comes from devoting one's life to the work-watch-spend treadmill. People who know in their hearts that it's wrong to treat the planet and whole groups of people as disposable. People who are challenging the bogus stories we've been fed for years and are writing their own about hope and love and working together to build a better future for everyone.

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.

Adverbs are a sign that you've used the wrong verb.

When I'm writing, I know I'm doing the thing I was born to do.

The only power that exists is inside ourselves.

I think best with a pencil in my hand.

I do outlines when I'm writing with someone, but they also need to have a certain amount of freedom

James Blish told me I had the worst case of "said bookism" (that is, using every word except said to indicate dialogue). He told me to limit the verbs to said, replied, asked, and answered and only when absolutely necessary.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.

I have a rule: before I can throw anything out, I have to write down five possible uses for it. This stretches my mind and keeps it nimble - just like stretching exercises do for my body.

Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.

I really want to help write women back into history.

What I like about being independent [in the music industry] is that anybody who does play the album on the radio and anybody who does choose to write in the media does so because they want to, because they like it or because they find something interesting there, not because they have to.

I'll have to get people to write songs for me right now until my own writing comes around.

Great writing attracts great actors. It attracts money. Without a great script, you have nothing.

When people ask me if musical theatre should be taught in music colleges, I reply that there is no need. All anyone needs to study is the second act of La Boheme because it is the most tightly constructed piece of musical theatre that there is. It is practically director-proof: you can't stage it badly because it just works too well. If you can write La Boheme, you can write anything. I would also recommend studying Britten's Peter Grimes.

The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.