Alan Sillitoe Quotes
The art of writing is to explain the complications of the human soul with the simplicity that can be universally understood.
Quotes to Explore
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I don't really like to explain my songs.
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I love writing journalism because it's all over in two hours and comes straight off the top of the head. Writing novels is soooooo much harder. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.
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When you're writing a book, you don't really think about it critically. You don't want to know too well what you're doing. First, you write the book, then you find the justification for it.
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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.
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Good acting is all in the writing. If it isn't on the page, then it really won't make any difference. You cannot act on force of personality alone.
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I'm a professional songwriter - personal attitudes have nothing to do with writing a song.
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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.
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If I weren't a performer, I would be still be writing and songwriting. Plus, I also really want to get into producing.
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Movie making is not like other art forms, like painting, or writing a novel, because that can be digested or interpreted... It takes two years to make each one of these, and it's always judged on money.
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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.
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You could take away the singing, and I am fine. But don't take away my gift of writing. It is the best way I can relate and express what I am feeling and what I am going through.
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Writing is a form of licensed madness.
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Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing.
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I could tell it was a popular move as a writer to walk down the bass lines while you were writing a song.
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I got a job as an assistant film editor, which lasted for a few years, but I found writing incredibly difficult, and I thought, 'How am I going to make a film if I can't write?' I didn't really comprehend that someone else would do that bit.
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I'm not happy when I'm writing, but I'm more unhappy when I'm not.
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I started writing in fourth grade and never stopped. I faked my way through high school and nearly was flushed from college - I still can't pay attention - and then had a series of day jobs. But always, continuously, I have written.
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In the history of literature there are many great enduring works which were not published in the lifetimes of the authors. If the authors had not achieved self-affirmation while writing, how could they have continued to write?
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I sometimes think that, since I started writing biographies, I've had more of a life in books than I have had in my real life.
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As an arts journalist in London, working mainly for the BBC, I interviewed hundreds if not thousands of authors. From them I gleaned a great deal of passing instruction in writing and I observed one fascinating detail: no two writers approach their work - physically - in the same way.
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If I've got Writer's Block it generally means that I don't have that much to say or something's not quite connecting. I have had Writer's Block a bunch of times and it's generally because I'm not able to write down what I'm feeling basically. Mostly, I just need to be alone really, or be with someone who can bring that out of me.
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Novel-writing is a bit like deception. You lie as little as you possibly can. That's the way I do it, anyway.
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Maybe 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' didn't have a lot of visual effects in it, but most movies have some sort of visual effects.
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The art of writing is to explain the complications of the human soul with the simplicity that can be universally understood.
