Writing Quotations

Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.

He who stops being better stops being good.

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.

I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me.

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

I refuse to write the same story twice. I keep experimenting. I keep learning how to work. I've been at it pretty much 50 years, and I'm now beginning to learn how to do the job well.

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.

I always treated writing as a profession, never as a hobby. If you don't believe in yourself, no one else will.

The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.

I have to live my books before I write them.

I know. I'm lazy. But I made myself a New Years resolution that I would write myself something really special. Which means I have 'til December, right?

The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.

I'm lucky because the strongest emotion I have ever felt is being in love, and that definitely informs my writing.

I really enjoy writing novels. Its like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off.

The only time I get sick of making people laugh is when I'm in a non-writing-joke mode, and I just can't seem to come up with anything new that's funny. That's a tough place to be as a comedian.

Writing is like playing golf - you have to keep working at your swing.

I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta: Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.

The strokes of the pen need deliberation as much as the sword needs swiftness.

I refuse to confide and don't like it when people write about art.

By being able to write a genome and plug it into an organism, the software, if you will, changes the hardware.

It may sound very strange, but I love the freedom that writing a novel gives me. It is an unhindered experience. If I come after a bad day, I can decide that my protagonist will die on page 100 of my novel in a 350-page story.

I don't write under the ghost of Faulkner. I live in the same town and find his life and work inspiring, but that's it. I have a motorcycle and tool along the country lanes. I travel at my own speed.

If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.

I set myself 600 words a day as a minimum output, regardless of the weather, my state of mind or if I'm sick or well. There must be 600 finished words — not almost right words. Before you ask, I'll tell you that yes, I do write 600 at the top of my pad every day, and I keep track of the word count to insure I reach my quota daily — without fail.

In a way, writing is an incredible act of individualism, producing your language, and yet to use it from the heart of a crowd as opposed to as an individual performance is a conflicting thing. I do stand alone, and yet it's not about being an individual or being ambitious.

Writing is really very easy. Tap a vein and bleed onto the page. Everything else is just technical.

There are some different things I'm writing and developing, but I don't know where they'll go. They're fun stuff that I would be in and are written in my voice, for me.

But the most precious research to me came from the paperwork filed on behalf of my grandparents and great-grandfather. The ship's manifest showed that they could read and write. I am still emotional when I look at those boxes checked yes.

Offhand, the only North American writers I can think of who have come from a background of rural poverty and gone on to write about it have been Negroes.

Someone who wants to write should make an effort to write a little something every day. Writing in this sense is the same as athletes who practice a sport every day to keep their skills honed.

I grew up in a working-class family, so I guess you could say I write from what I know.

I'll tell you, Quentin Tarantino really writes the most amazing dialogue.

The biggest hurdle to writing Fargo Rock City was that I couldn't afford a home computer - I had to get a new job so I could buy a computer. It could all change though. In five years, I could be back at some daily newspaper, which wouldn't be so bad.

Youve got to live life to write a book about it.

I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.

The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing.

I grew up in an environment of jokes and sarcasm and puns. I talk that way, so I write that way.

Simple is the only way I can write.

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

I spent every night until four in the morning on my dissertation, until I came to the point when I could not write another word, not even the next letter. I went to bed. Eight o'clock the next morning I was up writing again.

For me, songwriting is something like breathing: I just do it. But that doesn't mean you're fantastic.

Another thing that's quite different in writing a book as a practicing newspaperman is that if you look at what you've written the next morning and you think you didn't get it quite right, you can fix it.

If you're writing anything decent, it's in you, it's your spirit coming out. If it's not an expression of how a person genuinely feels, then it's not a good song done with any conviction.

For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent.

Writing 'February' made me realize that breaking form is a way of letting the song be human.

I was 22 and stopped writing plays, and I didn't start again until I was 25. I was writing badly. In college, I attempted to write these more conventional plays, but the theater I loved was downtown experimental theater. I didn't feel like I could do that either. It didn't occur to me to do my own thing.

Michael came home and asked, Would you like to write a song with me? I got this idea for a title called A Kiss at the End of a Rainbow. So we had a couple glasses of wine and wrote it.

Strangely, some songs you really don't want to write.

Diplomacy in a sense is the opposite of writing. You have to disperse yourself so much: the lady who comes in crying because shes had a fight with the secretary; exports and imports; students in trouble; thumbtacks for the embassy.

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.

I didn't start out writing to give children hope, but I'm glad some of them found it.

Writing headlines is a specialty - there are outstanding writers who will tell you they couldn't write a headline to save their lives.

I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers.

When I'm writing, I'm constantly thinking about myself, because it's the only experience I have to draw on. And I don't see an exact reflection of myself in every face in the audience, but I know that my songs have validity to them, and that's why the fans are there.

People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.

It would be curious to discover who it is to whom one writes in a diary. Possibly to some mysterious personification of one's own identity.

Not to sound egomaniac or anything, but just to get under people's skin like that, and for them to believe in you and believe strongly enough to write... it's flattering and it helps you during the day.

I have never written a play, a story, a poem, or my one film - anything - unless something was troubling me enough, wrecking me, in fact, to drive me back into the absurdity of writing. I do not enjoy writing.

I wish I were one of those terribly clever people who, when they write their autobiographies, always say, when I was fifteen months old I distinctly remember my Aunt Fanny saying to me, etc.

I don't think of myself as an illustrator. I think of myself as a cartoonist. I write the story with pictures - I don't illustrate the story with the pictures.

I remember listening to the radio as a kid and finding that the songs always made me feel more peaceful. Funny, but the more hurtin' the music was, the better it made me feel. I think of that now when I write my songs. I may not be feelin' the blues myself, but I'm writing them for other people who have a hard life.

I used to think, 'How can I write my life story? I'm still living it.

A lot of writing takes place in the subconscious, and it's bound to have an effect.

The real trouble with the writing game is that no general rule can be worked out for uniform guidance, and this applies to sales as well as to writing.

Writing for the page is only one form of writing for the eye. Wherever solemn inscriptions are put up in public places, there is a sense that the site and the occasion demand a form of writing which goes beyond plain informative prose. Each word is so valued that the letters forming it are seen as objects of solemn beauty.

The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end.

You can write about other people and their ideas and life without having lived it, but even your perception of that is going to be colored by what you know and what you experience. And this is undeniable.

I write for young girls of color, for girls who don't even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive. I can only change how they live, not how they think.

I write best in the morning, and I can only write for about half a day, that's about it.

I write out of gratitude for all the books I have loved over the years.

I write in the mornings, two or three hours every day, and then at least four times a week I play in a duplicate game at a bridge club. I try to go to tournaments three, four, or five times a year.

One of the things I have become aware of through the years is how much I love the people I write about.

The greatest compliment a writer can be given is that a story and character hold a reader spellbound. Im caught up in the story writing and I miss a good deal of sleep thinking about it and working out the plot points.

I also believe that writing becomes worthwhile and vitalized only through a full and exciting life.

I was just on the edge of getting married, and I was frenzied at the prospect of this great step in my life after having been a bachelor for so long. And I really wanted to take my mind off of the agony, and so I decided to sit down and write a book.

I'm not everybody's cup of tea. But sometimes criticism can be hurtful. Be respectful. I'm a good piano player, I can sing well, I write good songs. If you don't like it, fair enough. But give me a break.

All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization.

Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.

Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time.

As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note.

In real life, people fumble their words. They repeat themselves and stare blankly off into space and don't listen properly to what other people are saying. I find that kind of speech fascinating but screenwriters never write dialogue like that because it doesn't look good on the page.

I write better in Cape Breton... too many people around in Ontario. Down there I meet all sorts of non-human people, but they don't bother me, and I don't feel I have to apologize on behalf of my species quite so often.

You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.

I tried once in my life to write a novel. I had written something like 80 pages of it when my laptop got stolen. When I told people this, they acted as if something tragic had happened, but I kind of felt relieved, grateful to the thief who saved me from another year of something that felt more like homework than fun.

I write almost every single part of my songs, even the actual drum parts sometimes, whether they be simple or layered with many different instruments.

I don't eat fast food often, but I love tacos. I could write prophetically about how perfect the taco is.

When I write a song, I always start on acoustic guitar, because that's a good test of a song, when it's really open and bare. You can often mislead yourself if you start with computers and samples and programming because you can disguise a bad song.

The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.

I was always drawn to Broadway musicals, and obviously composers like Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin and Porter were writing music that I found wildly impressive.

I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.

Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.

When I was in elementary school, I used to write letters to myself. I'd write letters and go 'Dear Kristen-at-16-years-old, happy birthday. I hope you're doing something.'

The muse holds no appointments. You can never call on it. I don't understand people who get up at 9 o'clock in the morning, put on the coffee and sit down to write.

Burnout is grist to the mill. I write every day, for most of the day, so it's just about turning into metaphor whatever's going on in my life, in the world, and in my head. Every nightmare, every moment of grief or joy or failure, is a moment I can convert into cash via words.

I'm going to write a book, continue acting, continue motivational speaking and just share with people who I am and what I've learned in my second chance of life and pass it on to people in their first chance of life.

You are just in the middle of a struggle with words which are really very stubborn things, with a blank page, with the damn thing that you use to write with, a pen or a typewriter, and you forget all about the reader when you are doing that

Sometimes I think my writing sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewriter running.

I suppose more than anything, it's the way of life in this part of the country that influences my writing. In Eastern North Carolina, with the exception of Wilmington, most people live in small towns.

Don't worry about never having time to write. Just write what you can in the time you do have and give yourself a big clap on the back, followed by a double latte and a blueberry muffin.