Writing Quotes - Page 78

Who says one instance of writing has anything in common with another instance?

Mythology, science and space exploration are subjects that have fascinated me since my early childhood. And they were always connected somehow with the music I write.

Give me a paper and pen, so I can write about my life of sin. A couple of bottles of gin, in case I don't get in.

What profession is more trying than that of author? After you finish a piece of work it only seems good to you for a few weeks; or if it seems good at all you are convinced that it is the last you will be able to write; and if it seems bad you wonder whether everything you have done isn’t poor stuff really; and it is one kind of agony while you are writing, and another kind when you aren’t.

If you start with a bang, you won't end with a whimper.

Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences.

No intelligent man wears a moustache voluntarily - you can write that down.

I write a story in my head. I see the story like a movie.

Writing has been a way of explaining to myself the things I do not understand.

The image that fiction presents is purged of the distractions, confusions and accidents of ordinary life.

I would spend my time telling stories or writing them.

The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance.

Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time as the strawberries knows nothing about grapes.

Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?

You don't find time to write. You make time. It's my job.

For me, being in prison writing in an African language was a way of saying: "Even if you put me in prison, I will keep on writing in the language which made you put me in prison."

It's always painful when you're writing memoirs because you've got to go through the dark places, but it gives you a chance to find out the person you really are, not the person you thought you were.

Philanthropy is not about giving money but about solving problems. While well-meaning, the idea of writing a check and calling it 'philanthropy' is extremely short-sighted and, unfortunately, extremely pervasive.

When the poet's sentiments are overly visible, the audience may become uncomfortable. Japanese ritual is the opposite. By writing simply and only about what is there, the audience is drawn into the poet's world. Their imagination is stimulated, and a silent connection is established. I believe this is where the most important aspect of the Japanese sense of beauty lies.

Writing is making sense of life.

If you caricature friends in your first novel they will be upset, but if you don't they will feel betrayed.

Often actors ask me if I think they should go on trying to be an actor. I have the same answer for everyone who asks: If you have a choice and could reasonably be happy doing something else, by all means go at once and do something else. Acting or writing or directing in the theatre or television or screen is only for the irrecoverably diseased, those who are so smitten with the need that there is no choice.

Anybody can find out if he is a writer. If he were a writer, when he tried to write of some particular day, he would find in the effort that he could recall exactly how the light fell and how the temperature felt, and all the quality of it. Most people cannot do it. If they can do it, they may never be successful in a pecuniary sense, but that ability is at the bottom of writing, I am sure.

One should write only those books from whose absence one suffers. In short: the ones you want on your own desk.

Every writer has to find their own way into writing.