Writing Quotes - Page 79

When the artist is truly the servant of the work, the work is better than the artist; Shakespeare knew how to listen to his work, and so he often wrote better than he could write; Bach composed more deeply, more truly than he knew, Rembrandt's brush put more of the human spirit on canvas than Rembrandt could comprehend. When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

The songs that I'm able to write are the songs I'm able to write, whatever they may be. The path I've cut for myself is pop music - love-y pop music. That's what I enjoy doing. And I don't think I'm going to get sick of it anytime soon.

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody's mercy, then you will probably write melodrama.

The Bible is not such a book a man would write if he could, or could write if he would.

Because to write, one must truly suffer.

The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.

When Nature gives a gorgeous rose, Or yields the simplest fern, She writes this motto on the leaves, "To whom it may concern!" And so it is the poet comes And revels in her bowers, And, though another hold the land, Is owner of the flowers.

I started to write an apology, but I don't have anything to say I'm sorry for.

Books are really, really hard to write. They represent a kind of a summit of grappling with what one really has to say

If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!

Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen.

If you are clear where you are going and you take several steps in that direction every day, you eventually have to get there. If I head north out of Santa Barbara and take five steps a day, eventually I have to end up in San Francisco. So decide what you want, write it down, review it constantly, and each day do something that moves you toward those goals.

Such things and deeds as are not written down are covered with darkness, and given over to the sepulchre of oblivion.

Writing is like praying, because you stop all other activities, descend into silence, and listen patiently to the depths of your soul, waiting for true words to come. When they do, you thank God because you know the words are a gift, and you write them down as honestly and cleanly as you can.

I write scripts in storyboard fashion using stick figures, and thought balloons and word balloons and captions. Then I'll write descriptions of what scenes should look like and turn it over to the artist

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.

the world I create in writing compensates for what the real world does not give me.

Most thinkers write badly, because they communicate not only their thoughts, but also the thinking of them.

It's always wrong of course to say that you can't do this or you can't do that in fiction. You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much.

The writing is therapeutic for me, it's an introverted process, I'm really inside my head. It's a really obsessive process. The live show, though, is the opposite. It's an extroverted process. It pushes me to connect with people, and so it pulls me out of my head and just pulls me out of myself.

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

I once considered writing a book called I'm not OK and you're not OK, and that's OK.

If you can write DNA, you're no longer limited to 'what is' but to what you could make.

I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist... Beethoven could have been forgiven if his symphonies had gone to his head. Gretchaninoff could also be forgiven if his Dobrinya Nikititch went to his head. But neither one could be forgiven for writing a piece that was amoral, servile, the work of a flunky.