Vicki Baum Quotes
To me, writing is not a profession. You might as well call living a profession. Or having children. Anything you can't help doing.
Quotes to Explore
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Writing about the future and the past is less a way of dramatizing change than of showing, by way of contrast, what abides.
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I read my books to writing workshops and friends, and I'm often focussed just on keeping them entertained. I never think about marketing at all.
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I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.
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I like to perform live like we're all just hanging out in my living room. I'm totally casual and informal on stage.
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I've been writing fiction probably since I was about 6 years old, so it's something that is second nature to me now. I just sit down and start writing. I don't sit down and start writing and it comes out perfectly - it's a process.
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When I'm writing, I'm just in it and trying to figure out what seems best.
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I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up.
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'Float On' was a fine song, but I was still writing the lyrics on the last day we were working on it and deciding if it was something we wanted to put on the record.
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Writing is a solitary journey, so I am always excited to go out on book tour and meet readers one-on-one.
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I studied philosophy, religious studies, and English. My training was writing four full-length novels and hiring an editor to tear them apart. I had enough money to do that, and then rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.
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Because I find writing painful, I try to get it over with as fast as possible. But I write every day, or I lose the thread.
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Freedom is living without chains.
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I'm an intense guy. I run 10 miles a day, which helps alleviate my intensity. Also, singing helps defuse my intensity. Playing the piano helps, and writing helps.
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Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.
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I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.
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Writing blurbs for books means you have to read the book, and it cuts into the business of bookselling. So every time I get a blurb from a bookseller, I try to write a thank you note.
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I start writing with only the vaguest idea about who my characters are and what is going to happen, and the characters and plot come into existence as I go. I've tried doing it the other way, but for me, outlining is a waste of time because I never follow the outline.
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I made a living being a background singer for years.
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To fall in love you have to be in the state of mind for it to take, like a disease.
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I was swept by the narrative structure of film... you can create a world, you can destroy it, you can do what you want with it and serve it to people just the way you like.
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Efficiency in government is a more elusive concept than efficiency in the private economy, which may be measured relatively easily as output per units of input. What is the government's 'output?'
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At what point in time can our government fire someone whose gross negligence left four Americans dead in Benghazi?
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A poem is a window that hangs between two or more human beings who otherwise live in darkened rooms.
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To me, writing is not a profession. You might as well call living a profession. Or having children. Anything you can't help doing.
