Red Smith (Walter Wellesley Smith) Quotes
Writing is very much like bricklaying. You learn to put one brick on top of another and spread the mortar so thick.
Quotes to Explore
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I've been writing a lot of poetry recently. It helps me think and work things out.
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I don't have any office; I can write everywhere. So, I put a piece of paper on the table, and then I travel. Literally, writing for me is like travelling. It's getting out of myself and living another life - maybe a better life.
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I'm trying to learn to smoke, which is rather weird when everyone is trying to stop. I'm not a smoker. But my character only smokes as an affectation.
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I can be collaborative, for instance, in situations where I go and study the artist's work before I start writing. Then I can at least try to write towards their style.
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I didn't necessarily have a total idea when I was writing the movie of where everything was going. I just wanted to have really realistic dialogue and write like people I knew talked. I tried to keep it very real.
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You need to understand that a skilled professional songwriter can accelerate your success as an already talented musician. These people are writing every single day, so their craft is really sharp, and it's the best songwriters who consistently get on the radio.
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When you're managing a large number of people, you learn that incentives matter tremendously. You really want people to be rewarded for doing the right thing for the customers and the organization.
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Writing anything, it sorta starts the way you'd build a castle at the beach. You're just taking your hands and you're mounting up sand.
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...Stevens does not think of inspiration (or whatever you want to call it) as a condition of composition. He too is waiting for the spark from heaven to fall-poets have no choice about this-but he waits writing; and this-other things being equal, when it’s possible, if it’s possible-is the best way for a poet to wait.
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If you like what you are writing, just write. Try to keep going before you stop to take a break. Keep going back before too much time has passed. And just stay with it.
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I have spent 20 years writing these books. Had I wanted to say men are beasts and scream, that takes 30 seconds.
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From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing.
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It's rare that I'm not at work on some sort of craft project. I've often enthused about the need to make things; how it employs a unique set of muscles - physical, intellectual, spiritual - that I can attain a state of flow when making something that I almost never can when writing.
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I've loved singing since forever. Whether it was with my sisters while cleaning the kitchen, putting shows on for my stuffed animals, writing songs about my stuffed animals, starting an a capella group with my cousins while on vacation, or awkwardly singing along to karaoke tracks alone in my bedroom - singing always found a way into my life.
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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.
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I hate being bored when I read a story. Even a well-trod theme can be made fresh by a different perspective or fresh writing.
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Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.
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Being an actor started me writing, and that led to directing.
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I want to keep going as I have, to travel, read, perform, write, and enjoy my family. I've promised myself only this: no more Laundromats, no more two-shows-a-night, and no more deadlines. I'll work at my own pace.
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With a character like a Captain Jack, who can essentially set up these verbal land mines around him, and just keep passing the "absurdity ball" around and the "irreverence ball" around, and keep people guessing and keep people confused, there's great safety in that. Me, myself, personally, I learn from it. It's a real pleasure, and I do need him.
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Rihanna is always on my playlist. I think she pumps you up and gets the day going. I also love - and I know this doesn't sound like a workout album - the Lumineers, lately, and Taylor Swift.
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There's sort of a theory that's going around in the China-watching community about a perfect storm coming up with the 2008 Olympics, a U.S. election and a Taiwanese election, some sort of mutually reinforcing explosion and crisis.
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I feel like my life has always been the 'Hey Look at Me Show.' I'm not apologetic about that.
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Writing is very much like bricklaying. You learn to put one brick on top of another and spread the mortar so thick.
