Writing Quotes - Page 74

I probably have not killed anyone in America because I write, I've maintained good controls over myself by writing.

The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.

I think I write for reluctant readers. Of course I want everyone to enjoy my books, but if the kids in the back row who normally don't pick up a book are engaged with what I'm writing, along with the kids who are big readers anyway, then I really feel like I've done my job.

You have to be compelled to write. If you’re not, nothing else that you do matters.

I write music with an exclamation point!

How working for the wrong motives poisons our creativity and warps our ideas of success and failure.

I have my favorite cat, who is my paperweight, on my desk while I am writing.

The only lesson is, you gotta keep at it.

Writing with voice is writing into which someone has breathed. It has that fluency, rhythm, and liveliness that exist naturally in the speech of most people when they are enjoying a conversation...Writing with real voice has the power to make you pay attention and understand --the words go deep.

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

You will achieve grand dream, a day at a time, so set goals for each day - not long and difficult projects, but chores that will take you, step by step, toward your rainbow. Write them down, if you must, but limit your list so that you won't have to drag today's undone matters into tomorrow. Remember that you cannot build your pyramid in twenty-four hours. Be patient. Never allow your day to become so cluttered that you neglect your most important goal - to do the best you can, enjoy this day, and rest satisfied with what you have accomplished.

Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.

I am only a little pencil in the hand of our Lord. He may cut or sharpen the pencil. He may write or draw whatever and whenever he wants. If the writing or drawing is good, we do not honor the pencil or the material that is used, but rather the one who used it.

But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?

I was brought up in many different cultures, moving around all the time, and I find my identity in my songs. I project the identity I want to have throughout the songs that I write.

He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.

A dream becomes a goal the moment you write it down. A goal becomes a plan the moment you break it down into doable steps. A plan becomes a reality only when you take action.

When I was young, when I started to write, we were totally convinced that literature was a kind of weapon.

Text is just ink on a page until a reader comes along and gives it life.

As you consider whether to move a child into formal academic training, remember that we want our children to do more than just learn how to read and write; we want them to learn in such a way that they become lifelong readers and writers. If we push our children to start learning these skills too far ahead of their own spontaneous interest and their capacity, we may sacrifice the long-range goal of having them enjoy such pursuits.

Every time I write these words they become a taboo, Making sure my punctuation curve, every letter here's true, Living my life in the margin, and that metaphor was proof.

In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.

When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.

There is no learned man but will confess be hath much profited by reading controversies,--his senses awakened, his judgment sharpened, and the truth which he holds firmly established. If then it be profitable for him to read, why should it not at least be tolerable and free for his adversary to write? In logic they teach that contraries laid together, more evidently appear; it follows then, that all controversy being permitted, falsehood will appear more false, and truth the more true; which must needs conduce much to the general confirmation of an implicit truth.

I never had any lessons. When I first started playing I used to read music. I was very interested in music. But when I started playing in groups I did a silly thing and dropped it. It's great if you can write things down.