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 had parents in the business and they made sure that the art was the biggest concern.
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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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A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be; it tells itself; I takes its own course, finds its own way, its own words; and the writer's job is to be its medium.
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Well, it kind of hurts when the kind of words you write And kind of turn themselves into knives And don't mind my nerve you can call it fiction 'Cause I like being submerged in your contradictions, dear 'Cause here we are, here we are Although you were biased, I love your advice Your comebacks they're quick and probably Have to do with your insecurities There's no shame in being crazy depending on how you take these Words they're paraphrasing this relationship we're staging And it's a beautiful mess, yes, it is It's like we're picking up trash in dresses
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The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up.
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I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous.
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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.
