Writing Quotes - Page 264

Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood.

one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.

When you write the story of two happy lovers, let the story be set on the banks of Lake Como.

Once you have looked at the land from atop the Kahlenberg, you will understand what I write and who I am.

It's about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story and all kinds of sonic goodness.

It is better to write of laughter than of tears, for laughter is the property of man.

I'm very proud of my flops, as much as of my successes.

If you feel the urge to write, just lie down and read a book: it will pass.

The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!

If there is no possibility for change in a character, we have no interest in him.

... Simone Weil is a mystery that should keep us all humble, and I need it more than most. Also she's the example of the religious consciousness without a religion which maybe sooner or later I will be able to write about.

There aint any news in being good. You might write the doings of all the convents of the world on the back of a postage stamp, and have room to spare.

We may know that the work we continue to put off doing will be bad. Worse, however, is the work we never do. A work that’s finished is at least finished. It may be poor, but it exists, like the miserable plant in the lone flowerpot of my neighbour who’s crippled. That plant is her happiness, and sometimes it’s even mine. What I write, bad as it is, may provide some hurt or sad soul a few moments of distraction from something worse. That’s enough for me, or it isn’t enough, but it serves some purpose, and so it is with all of life.

No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the oppposite.

How truly does this journal contain my real and undisguised thoughts--I always write it according to the humour I am in, and if astranger was to think it worth reading, how capricious--insolent & whimsical I must appear!--one moment flighty and half mad,--the next sad and melancholy. No matter! Its truth and simplicity are its sole recommendations.

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.

If I don't already know a song's chord progression, I'll stop writing and try to figure it out. I can occasionally listen to unstructured, amelodic ambient music, but I prefer no music. I don't need silence - I can write just about anywhere - but music is a major distraction.

The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.

Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity.

To help people in the third world get educated and learn how to read and write is so important. I mean it is such an important human right.

I've always had a very developed superego. I also had a very powerful id, but there was no ego in the middle. So writing was always like letters sent from the id to the superego, saying, "What's going on here?" What I loved about writing was that I was totally weightless. I was amazed at the fact that I could be myself without being afraid that anyone would get hurt.

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

Worry destroys the ability to write.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.