Writing Quotes - Page 96

When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.

Anybody can write music of a sort. But touching the public heart is quite another thing.

You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest.

The astrologers and historians write that the ascendant as of Oxford is Capricornus, whose lord is Saturn, a religious planet, and patron of religious men.

The fact that the theatregoing public likes my music is no credit to me. There are many other composers who write better music that the public doesn't like.

I have been commissioned to write an autobiography and I would be grateful to any of your readers who could tell me what I was doing between 1960 and 1974.

I have come from France more firmly convinced than ever that Negros should write Negro music. We have our own racial feeling and if we try to copy whites we will make bad copies…We won France by playing music which was ours and not a pale imitation of others, and if we are to develop in America we must develop along our own lines.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

Vivaldi didn't write 400 concertos; he wrote one concerto 400 times.

What most of us must be involved in--whether we teach or write, make films, write films, direct films, play music, act, whatever we do--has to not only make people feel good and inspired and at one with other people around them, but also has to educate a new generation to do this very modest thing: change the world.

I've found in composing that being simple and profound—having in-depthness in your music—is the most difficult thing to do. Anybody can write a whole lot of notes, which may or may not say something . . . But why make it complicated for the musicians to play? Why make it difficult for the listeners to hear?

Before the gates of excellence the high gods have placed sweat; long is the road thereto and rough and steep at first; but when the heights are reached, then there is ease, though grievously hard in the winning.

The ancient codes were doubtless originally suggested by the discovery and diffusion of the art of writing.

Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.

I wake up around noon, light a cigarette, get a cup of coffee, sit in the bathtub for an hour and daydream, and I usually come up with some ideas... It's a very irresponsible life. The only decisions I make are about the notes I'm writing.

Acting is fun; it's easier than writing, and if you get on a [TV] show, it draws people to your stand-up. That's ultimately what I'd like to do.

It's a delicious thing to write. To be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating.

Even when I have to write a simple letter I'm scared stiff as if faced with looming seasickness.

Force yourself to write down what is of no interest, what is most obvious, most common, most colourless...antique shops, clothes, hi-fi, etc. Don't say, don't write 'etc'. Make an effort to exhaust the subject, even if that seems grotesque, or pointless, or stupid. You still haven't looked at anything, you've merely picked out what you've long ago picked out.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

You cannot write on the heart of another what you do not feel yourself.

There's no better satisfaction than writing. I feel that writing is the best and everything else comes with it

A lot of my songs are fantasy. I can dream up all kinds of things. That's the kind of world I live in. It's very sort of flamboyant, and that's the kind of way I write. I love it

The beauty of the written word is that it can be held close to the heart and read over and over again.

Beware of writing to me. I always answer ... My father spent the last 20 years of his life writing letters. If someone thanked him for a wedding present, he thanked them for thanking him and there was no end to the exchange but death.