Matt Haig Quotes
Like most art forms, writing is part instinct and part craft. The craft part is the part that can be taught, and that can make a crucial difference to lots of writers.
Quotes to Explore
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My father had a lot of allergies, and he just didn't like the cold of Chicago, and his father - his parents had broken up when he was young, and his father had lived in Pasadena for a while, and he kind of fell in love with Southern California.
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I didn't live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don't know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.
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Music is an art that touches the depth of human existence; an art of sounds that crosses all borders.
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I like writing flawed women, and being one, it's something I feel I can write with some veracity and authority.
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The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.
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Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life.
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I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.
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I have no interest in writing, directing or producing.
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Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find some universal formula for it.
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However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously.
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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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In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death.
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Every good painter paints what he is.
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Filmmaking is a very privileged art form. It costs a lot of money to make these things.
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Man is unique not because he does science, and his is unique not because he does art, but because science and art equally are expressions of his marvelous plasticity of mind.
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One thing I've had to realize in my career is that I can't do it all. Sometimes we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make sure we're writing the next hit. There are other people out there, and that's what they do every day, and they have strengths that I don't have.
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When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.
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I did not go to any creative writing workshop; I did not major in literature. If I can write, anyone can write. All it needs is imagination.
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When I was in college, being a magician was not the classiest thing to be. It was like being a folk singer before Bob Dylan.
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I don't want to work just for the sake of working. Generally, if a good script comes in, I read it, and if it appeals to me, it appeals to me. And it doesn't have to be anything - it doesn't have to be the main character; it doesn't have to be a huge part.
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Poetry arises from the desire to get beyond the finite and the historical—the human world of violence and difference—and to reach the transcendent or divine. You're moved to write a poem, you feel called upon to sing, because of that transcendent impulse. But as soon as you move from that impulse to the actual poem, the song of the infinite is compromised by the finitude of its terms.
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I think it's despicable to be on display and a fashion showoff.
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Like most art forms, writing is part instinct and part craft. The craft part is the part that can be taught, and that can make a crucial difference to lots of writers.
