Nancy Mairs Quotes

Writing is not, alas, like riding a bicycle: it does not get easier with practice.

Nancy Mairs

• Writing
• Practice
• Riding

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• The more I go on in this career of making albums, writing songs and playing music, the more I think of each album as a movie. I really wanted to make a film, but making a film is much more expensive than making a record.

  

  J. D. Souther
  • Music
  • Writing
  • Movie

• Hard writing makes easy reading.

  

  Wallace Stegner
  • Writing
  • Reading
  • Easy

• Black people were very angry with me for writing the book. A lot of people didn't believe me, or didn't want to believe me, and that used to really bother me. It was a very painful and difficult time.

  

  LaToya Jackson
  • People
  • Time
  • Believe

• When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, 'Oh yes - I already have everything that I really need.'

  

  Dalai Lama
  • Desire
  • Practice
  • Yourself

• My highest point was the first thing I won, a short story competition in a women's magazine in the Eighties. It was the first time I'd had my writing validated, and the first thing I'd ever shown anyone else.

  

  Kate Atkinson
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Women

• 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.

  

  Ted Dekker
  • Writing
  • Money
  • Religious

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

  

  Taylor Jenkins Reid
  • Writing
  • Love
  • Book

• Instead of writing songs for girls, I tend to write albums, which I guess is a bit weird.

  

  Ed Sheeran
  • Writing
  • Weird
  • Write

• The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.

  

  A. B. Yehoshua
  • Writing
  • Beginning
  • Process

• 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.

  

  Wally Lamb
  • Writing
  • May
  • Think

• I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.

  

  Irvine Welsh
  • Writing
  • Like
  • More

• 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.

  

  Randy Houser
  • People
  • Writing
  • Career

• I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. That's what I do. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it.

  

  Van Morrison
  • Music
  • Writing
  • Hate

• The hardest thing about writing a script is you finish it, but it doesn't mean anything. It's not like a novel or short story - a script is meant to be made into a movie.

  

  Maggie Carey
  • Writing
  • Movie
  • Short

• By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.

  

  Ralph Ellison
  • Writing
  • Identity
  • Communication

• All good writing comes out of aloneness.

  

  Sam Shepard
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Good Writing

• I enjoy writing. Publishing... not so much. I've been lucky to work with some very talented people in the publishing world, and the print industry has allowed me to write full time.

  

  J. A. Konrath
  • People
  • Time
  • World

• Writing has to support itself.

  

  V. S. Naipaul
  • Writing
  • Support
  • Itself

• New Year's Eve is a great time to think about making a resolution to change a behavior, improve upon a practice, or to start something new. Most people don't keep their resolutions very far into the year, but there's no reason to wait until Dec 31st to reboot.

  

  Dana Perino
  • People
  • Time
  • Great

• Through a long and painful process, I've learned that happiness is an inside job - not based on anything or anyone in the outer material world. I've become a different and better person - not perfect, but still a work in progress.

  

  Alana Stewart
  • World
  • Work
  • Different

• Dancing serves no necessary use, no profitable, laudable, or pious end at all. It is only from the inbred pravity, vanity, wantonness, incontinency, pride, profaneness, or madness of man's depraved nature.

  

  William Prynne
  • Dancing
  • Madness
  • Necessary

• A racing tipster who only reached Hitler's level of accuracy would not do well for his clients.

  

  A. J. P. Taylor
  • Racing
  • Clients
  • Accuracy

• To get noticed, I had to take my films in a space which was much more democratic in terms of cinema - the international film festivals.

  

  Anurag Kashyap
  • Space

• Writing is not, alas, like riding a bicycle: it does not get easier with practice.

  

  Nancy Mairs
  • Writing
  • Practice
  • Riding