Writing Quotes - Page 9

The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger--but recognize the opportunity.

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.

The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.

Before you go to bed, write down three 'gratefuls' for the day and three 'did wells' (they can even include something as simple as doing the laundry)-the results can be amazing!

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.

I'll always definitely strive to write songs that are going to help people feel confident in themselves.

It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

I am flying back to New York as I write this. I will never forget these wonderful 35 days and I would go back to Copenhagen in a heartbeat to work there again.

You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else's script.

If I fail, the film industry writes me off as another statistic. If I succeed, they pay me a million bucks to fly out to Hollywood and fart.

The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people, and then they come after you with machetes.

If only this toothache would go away, I could write another chapter on the problem of pain.

Louis Braille created the code of raised dots for reading and writing that bears his name and brings literacy, independence, and productivity to the blind.

The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.

Your eyelashes will write on my heart the poem that could never come from the pen of a poet.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.