Writing Quotes - Page 39

I tend to discourage people from calling me 'Sir Ian,' because I don't like being separated out from the rest of the population. Of course, it can be useful if you're writing an official letter, like trying to get a visa or something passed through Parliament. They're impressed by these things.

Believe in your character. Animate (or write) with sincerity.

What do you know about me, given that I believe in secrecy? ... If I stick where I am, if I don't travel around, like anyone else I make my inner journeys that I can only measure by my emotions, and express very obliquely and circuitously in what I write. ... Arguments from one's own privileged experience are bad and reactionary arguments.

Let me tell you how the story ends, where the good guys die and the bad guys win. It doesn't matter how many friend you make, but the graffite they write on your grave.

I write music, it’s performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesn’t need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.

We write. How fortunate we are: The world does not close in on us. The world does not grow smaller.

You don't have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness ... has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I'm going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me.

Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance.

When I write songs, I try to write in a way to reach as many people as I can, to be a lighthouse versus a flashlight.

Love is the bridge that leads from the I sense to the We, and there is a paradox about personal love. Love of another individual opens a new relation between the personality and the world. The lover responds in a new way to nature and may even write poetry. Love is affirmation; it motivates the yes responses and the sense of wider communication. Love casts out fear, and in the security of this togetherness we find contentment, courage. We no longer fear the age-old haunting questions: "Who am I?" "Why am I?" "Where am I going?" - and having cast out fear, we can be honest and charitable.

Now, when I was in the Army, writing was my hobby.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

I try and write honestly about what I see around me now.

In the beginning, I want to say something about human greatness. Some time ago, I was reading texts of Kungtse. When I read these texts, I understood something about human greatness. What I understood from his writings was: What is greatest in human beings is what makes them equal to everybody else. Everything else that deviates higher or lower from what is common to all human beings makes us less. If we know this, we can develop a deep respect for every human being.

I can only speak for myself. But what I write and how I write is done in order to save my own life. And I mean that literally. For me literature is a way of knowing that I am not hallucinating, that whatever I feel/know is.

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.

I am very much a scientist, and so I naturally have thought about religion also through the eyes of a scientist. When I do that, I see religion not denominationally, but in a more, let us say, deistic sense. I have been influence in my thinking by the writing of Einstein who has made remarks to the effect that when he contemplated the world he sensed an underlying Force much greater than any human force. I feel very much the same. There is a sense of awe, a sense of reverence, and a sense of great mystery.

Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.

Writing a first draft is like groping one's way into a dark room, or overhearing a faint conversation, or telling a joke whose punchline you've forgotten. As someone said, one writes mainly to rewrite, for rewriting and revising are how one's mind comes to inhabit the material fully.

Learning to program has no more to do with designing interactive software than learning to touch type has to do with writing poetry

Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process.

The one good thing about not seeing you is that I can write you letters.

I'm going to spend my life writing poems, turning them into music that will affect people and touch their hearts. I'm going to write the songs that people can't write for themselves.

I write to tell the truth about the black condition as I see it. Therefore, I write to offer a black woman's view of the world.