Malcolm Cowley Quotes

Writing offers fairly large rewards to a few successful people, but the rewards come late, and most writers are failures.

Malcolm Cowley

• Writing
• Failures
• Rewards
• Offers

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• When I was around eight, I learned how to touch-type at school, and I received a computer as a present. I started writing plays, and for many years I thought I would be a playwright.

  

  Gabrielle Zevin
  • Writing
  • School
  • Present

• I've been writing a lot of poetry recently. It helps me think and work things out.

  

  Ed Westwick
  • Work
  • Writing
  • Poetry

• I've got plenty of quirks. I go to an office early in the morning. Early in the morning is really good writing time. I take anywhere between six to eight showers a day. I'm not exaggerating. I'm not a germaphobe: it's all about a fresh start.

  

  Aaron Sorkin
  • Time
  • Good
  • Writing

• We're more interested in someone writing a really great answer that's going to be read by thousands or tens of thousands of people over the next few years as it stays on Quora and as it gets distributed on the Internet.

  

  Adam D'Angelo
  • People
  • Great
  • Writing

• I don't talk about Amy Winehouse as a 'singer.' She's a pioneer. I listened to her endlessly when I started writing.

  

  Laura Mvula
  • Writing
  • Talk
  • Singer

• I love writing songs.

  

  Sade Adu
  • Writing
  • Love
  • Songs

• I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.

  

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • People
  • Writing
  • Political

• One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things.

  

  Harrison Birtwistle
  • Music
  • Writing
  • Take

• I'm a professional songwriter - personal attitudes have nothing to do with writing a song.

  

  Sammy Cahn
  • Writing
  • Song
  • Professional

• 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

• There's a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast.

  

  J. Michael Straczynski
  • Writing
  • Funny
  • Sad

• If I weren't a performer, I would be still be writing and songwriting. Plus, I also really want to get into producing.

  

  Manika
  • Writing
  • Want
  • Songwriting

• It's kind of a catch-22 now because since the 'Da Vinci Code,' I have access to places and people that I didn't have access to before, so that's a lot of fun for somebody like me, but I'm always trying to keep a secret. I don't want people to know what I'm writing about.

  

  Dan Brown
  • People
  • Writing
  • Trying

• From 1999 on - until 2003 - I covered publishing in a weekly column for Wired.com and wrote for several other publications - altogether writing over 150 articles.

  

  M. J. Rose
  • Writing
  • Over
  • Wrote

• When people come to Twitter and they want to express something in the world, the technology fades away. It's them writing a simple message and them knowing that people are going to see it.

  

  Jack Dorsey
  • People
  • World
  • Writing

• 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

• I was already writing 'The Lost Symbol' when I started to realize 'The Da Vinci Code' would be big. The thing that happened to me and must happen to any writer who's had success is that I temporarily became very self-aware.

  

  Dan Brown
  • Writing
  • Success
  • Lost

• If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.

  

  Elmore Leonard
  • Up
  • Work
  • Writing

• My biggest problem about writing is whenever I write piano pieces, because I then have to learn to play them, which is sometimes not so easy.

  

  Philip Glass
  • Writing
  • Problem
  • Write

• I met this woman who was a hundred, this housekeeper, a hundred years old. I interviewed her. She just told me about her whole life. She's like, 'I can't read, I can't write; I can tell you who I was working for, and I can tell you the year, but who was president?'

  

  Tate Taylor
  • Life
  • Woman
  • Write

• Many critics, when trying to praise a short-story collection, will say that it has the heft and scope of a good novel. But for me, one of the highest compliments you can pay a novel is to say that it has the rich texture and eloquent detail of a good story collection.

  

  Gary Krist
  • Good
  • Trying
  • Detail

• Writing offers fairly large rewards to a few successful people, but the rewards come late, and most writers are failures.

  

  Malcolm Cowley
  • Writing
  • Failures
  • Rewards