Writing Quotes - Page 53

I owe very, very much to Mozart; and if one studies, for instance, the way in which I write for string quartet, then one cannot deny that I have learned this directly from Mozart. And I am proud of it!

Our lives with all their miracles and wonders are merely a discontinuous string of incidents - until we create the narrative that gives them meaning

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

If we don't risk it all, we may as well not write at all.

Dig until you hit rock. Then take out that jackhammer and go a little deeper.

Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.

I have read many definitions of what is a conservationist, and written not a few myself, but I suspect that the best one is written not with a pen, but with an axe. It is a matter of what a man thinks about while chopping, or while deciding what to chop. A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke he is writing his signature on the face of his land.

The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.

If you don’t write the book you have to write, everything breaks.

Editors seek out the first novels with the seductiveness of Don Juans; the pleasure of discovery is one of the obvious reasons.

My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.

Facebook is like jail, you sit around and waste time, you write on walls and you get poked by people you don't know

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

Flow is something the reader experiences, not the writer.

Both light and shadow are the dance of Love. Love has no cause, it is the astrolabe of God's secrets. Lover and loving are inseparable and timeless. Although I may try to describe love, when I experience it, I am speechless. Although I may try to write about love, I am rendered helpless. My pen breaks, and the paper slips away at the ineffable place where lover loving and loved are one. Every moment is made glorious by the light of Love.

Read a lot, finding out what kind of writing turns you on, in order to develop a criterion for your own writing. And then trust it-and yourself.

Dreaming and hoping won't produce a piece of work; only writing, rewriting and rewriting (if necessary)- a devoted translation of thoughts and dreams into words on paper will result in a story.

Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.

It doesn't really matter what one writes into a constitution. The important thing is what the collective instinct eventually makes of it.

I've got some of my best yarns from park benches, lamp posts and newspaper stands.

I started writing when I was about 20, 21 maybe.

I realized how valuable the art and practice of writing letters are, and how important it is to remind people of what a treasure letters--handwritten letters--can be. In our throwaway era of quick phone calls, faxes, and email, it's all to easy never to find the time to write letters. That's a great pity--for historians and the rest of us.

My father, a bookkeeper who never earned more than $11,000 a year in his life, sat there, writing out a $25 check to the NAACP. When I asked him why, he said discrimination against anyone is discrimination against us all. And I never forgot that. Indeed, his philanthropy was a gift, not just to that organization, but to me.

TV writing is for people who hate being alone more than they hate writing.

There are as many ways to write songs as there are songs.