Billy Strayhorn Quotes

A Train was born without any effort - if was like writing a letter to a friend.

Billy Strayhorn

• Writing
• Friend
• Effort

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• Once you research an idea, you begin to develop a perspective. Writing about anything in public, often in real time, has helped fashion my views.

  

  Barry Ritholtz
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Real

• Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

  

  E. L. Doctorow
  • Writing
  • Learn
  • Start

• When I was a kid - 10, 11, 12, 13 - the thing I wanted most in the world was a best friend. I wanted to be important to people; to have people that understood me. I wanted to just be close to somebody.

  

  Fiona Apple
  • People
  • World
  • Important

• I don't have specific music for when I'm writing. I'm usually listening to the same playlist or 'artist' before I arrive at the computer as when I'm walking somewhere after leaving the computer.

  

  Tao Lin
  • Music
  • Writing
  • Listening

• People say, 'How does having kids change your writing? Do you see the world through their eyes?' No - you just become a faster songwriter... In the old days, you'd be like, 'Oh I'm gonna work on this song for a few days.'

  

  Eddie Vedder Pearl Jam
  • People
  • World
  • Work

• The ego being shattered is not what frightens me - that can be useful for writing - but the ego being inflated is sort of like it dying of gout.

  

  Garth Risk Hallberg
  • Writing
  • Dying
  • Ego

• Personal relationships are usually my biggest inspirations for writing my songs. The best way for me to write a song is to visualise the story in my head, and I start humming a melody, and before you know it, a song is born.

  

  Nadia Ali
  • Writing
  • Song
  • Best

• I love writing two narratives! I think concurrent storylines are my favorite way to write a book.

  

  Taylor Jenkins Reid
  • Writing
  • Love
  • Book

• Whatever's going on with me at the time of writing is going to find its way into the piece. If that doesn't happen, then what the hell am I doing? So if I'm writing 'Inglourious Basterds,' and I'm in love with a girl and we break up, that's going to find its way into the piece.

  

  Quentin Tarantino
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Break

• The accidents of my life have given me the ability to make stories in which different parts of the world are brought together, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes both - usually both. The difficulty in these stories is that if you write about everywhere you can end up writing about nowhere.

  

  Salman Rushdie
  • Life
  • Up
  • World

• Solitude is creativity's best friend, and solitude is refreshment for our souls.

  

  Naomi Judd
  • Friend
  • Creativity
  • Solitude

• At least half my writing time is spent researching. So for every hour I'm actually clicking on the keyboard, I'm spending another hour trying to figure out some tiny detail I need answered.

  

  Gail Carriger
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Trying

• I would love to continue in music, with writing... but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don't need to be blonde when I'm 60!

  

  Taylor Swift
  • Music
  • Kids
  • Person

• I love the whole process for each new album. The writing, the touring, everything. For me, it never gets old.

  

  Zakk Wylde Black Label Society
  • Writing
  • Never
  • Process

• When I graduated high school, I bought a guitar and, at first, didn't really think I'd get into the songwriting thing as much as I did. But after learning a few songs of other people's to play on the guitar, I got bored with that and just started writing songs on my own, and that's kinda how it came about.

  

  Sam Hunt
  • People
  • Writing
  • School

• Octavia Butler often described herself as an outsider, but within science fiction, she was loved as an insider, someone who was a fan first and came to S.F. writing as an enthusiastic reader.

  

  Karen Joy Fowler
  • Writing
  • Science
  • Loved

• I think the beauty of the writing of 'Game of Thrones' is not that the characters are fearless; it's how they overcome their fear, you know?

  

  Natalie Dormer
  • Writing
  • Game
  • Fear

• Things I used to get in trouble for writing at 'SNL,' suddenly other people like it.

  

  Adam McKay
  • People
  • Writing
  • Trouble

• I don't think I'll ever want to do pop music. I think I'll only ever want to do classical crossover because it's something that I love, and pop just doesn't work for me.

  

  Jackie Evancho
  • Work
  • Music
  • Love

• People don't just love mysteries. They are obsessed with them - especially the kind that are never definitively solved.

  

  Karin Slaughter
  • People
  • Mysteries
  • Obsess

• Going through the ranks and all the training you do as an actor, you hope you're going to make it. But there's a part of you that's got to be realistic and say: 'Look, it might not happen to me.'

  

  Sam Claflin
  • Hope
  • Me
  • Training

• I think higher education is over-regulated.

  

  Lamar Alexander
  • Think
  • Education
  • Higher

• I'm always busy. You know, the more I do, the more ideas I have—that's the funny thing. The brain is a muscle, and I'm a kind of body builder.

  

  Karl Lagerfeld
  • Kind
  • Brain
  • Busy

• A Train was born without any effort - if was like writing a letter to a friend.

  

  Billy Strayhorn
  • Writing
  • Friend
  • Effort