Writing Quotes - Page 58

Paper is to write things down that we need to remember. Our brains are used to think.

Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.

Writing is a legitimate way, an important way, to participate in the empowerment of the community that names me.

For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.

I write only because There is a voice within me That will not be still

A form of intellectual productiveness, therein lies its peculiar charm. Intellectual productiveness is one of the greatest joys - if not the greatest one - of human existence. It is not everyone who can write a play, or build a bridge, or even make a good joke. But in chess everyone can, everyone must be intellectually productive, and so can share in this select delight. I have always a slight feeling of pity for the man who has no knowledge of chess, just as I would pity the man who has remained ignorant of love. Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy.

There is not some glorious theoretical synthesis of capitalism that you can write down in a book and follow. You have to grope your way

Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.

As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are.

If unbridled licence of speech and writing be granted to all, nothing will remain sacred and inviolate; even the highest and truest mandates of nature, justly held to be the common and noblest heritage of the human race, will not be spared. Thus, truth being gradually obscured by darkness, pernicious and manifold error, as too often happens, will easily prevail.

I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.

Before you write - remember that every speech has something of 'you' in the writing. Don't take that away when you write. Be yourself. Be comfortable in your own skin.

Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.

You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.

I'm not used to writing about happy emotions, I'm just used to pulling from my sad or angry - happy emotions are very hard for me to portray in music.

I'm afraid my closely guarded solitude causes some hurt feelings now and then. But how to explain, without wounding someone, that you want to be wholly in the world you are writing about, that it would take two days to get the visitor's voice out of the house so that you could listen to your own characters again?

Today begins a new saga in my life which I expect to strengthen me and allow me time for reflection... I plan to write music while in prison, read and pray regularly and will come out a stronger, more confident woman.

I only want to write one thing over the doorpost to my heart and life: “Jesus Christ lives here.

Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement. If it was, no artist would be able to paint inhumane practices, no author could write about them, and no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time.

I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.

Really, the only thing a psychiatrist can do that a good (fishing) guide can't is write prescriptions.

I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

Rest and be kind, you don't have to prove anything