Andrew Motion Quotes

But I can't and don't ever want to write bell-yanking confetti-tossing hat-throwing poems.

Andrew Motion

• Writing
• Hats
• Bells
• Throwing
• Confetti

• 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

• The story was such that I couldn't make a graceful ending and then make a graceful new beginning. I could have, but I didn't want to. So, it isn't the most graceful way of writing a story. This new story is, I think, is pretty good stuff. I'm pleased with it anyway.

  

  Jack Vance
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Pretty

• Once you research an idea, you begin to develop a perspective. Writing about anything in public, often in real time, has helped fashion my views.

  

  Barry Ritholtz
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Real

• Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.

  

  E. L. Doctorow
  • Writing
  • Learn
  • Start

• I like the performing. And interviews, even. And the stuff that's not sitting in a room by yourself with empty paper. But I never loved writing, to tell you the truth.

  

  Randy Newman
  • Writing
  • Truth
  • Yourself

• 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

• There are places where writing is acting and acting is writing. I'm not so interested in the divisions. I'm interested in the way things cross over.

  

  Sam Shepard
  • Writing
  • Way
  • Acting

• Writing books is a nice retreat. There's nothing quite like diving into a book for a few hours. That is a big time vacation.

  

  Padgett Powell
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Book

• The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does.

  

  Natalie Goldberg
  • Writing
  • You
  • Quality

• I love writing songs.

  

  Sade Adu
  • Writing
  • Love
  • Songs

• Normally, most writers don't say, 'I'm going into a mild hypnotic trance.' Typically, they don't know how they do it. Most people, when they have a good experience writing, they're well placed in that state, which is also sometimes called a 'flow state.' If you don't have trouble, you don't have to think about it.

  

  Madison Smartt Bell
  • People
  • Good
  • Writing

• I like writing flawed women, and being one, it's something I feel I can write with some veracity and authority.

  

  Callie Khouri
  • Writing
  • Women
  • Feel

• I love writing. Given a choice, after directing for all these years, and if given an army of talented directors, I would not direct at all.

  

  Vikram Rohit Shetty
  • Writing
  • Love
  • Army

• Very often, writing a song is a process that happens to me rather than one that I instigate. I feel a song coming on and, like a sneeze; I wait for it until it comes.

  

  Kat Edmonson
  • Writing
  • Song
  • Process

• 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

• People say, 'How does having kids change your writing? Do you see the world through their eyes?' No - you just become a faster songwriter... In the old days, you'd be like, 'Oh I'm gonna work on this song for a few days.'

  

  Eddie Vedder Pearl Jam
  • People
  • World
  • Work

• I like collaboration because, first of all, I'm good at writing lyrics. I don't know how to make beats. I don't play instruments. I'm not a good singer. So even when you see a solo album of mine, it's still a collaboration.

  

  Talib Kweli Black Star
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Lyrics

• 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

• We went through this business of me writing out all the parts for these old songs from Gravity and Speechless and we'd been performing that, but we don't do that any more.

  

  Fred Frith Aksak Maboul
  • Writing
  • Business

• I come from a culture where you don't divide it up to what you can do on TV and what you can do on film.

  

  Mads Mikkelsen
  • Up
  • Culture
  • You

• Helen, thy beauty is to meLike those Nicean barks of yore,That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,The weary, wayworn wanderer boreTo his own native shore.On desperate seas long wont to roam,Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,Thy Naiad airs have brought me homeTo the glory that was GreeceAnd the grandeur that was Rome.

  

  Edgar Allan Poe
  • Long
  • Hair
  • Sea

• Nothing on earth can resist an absolutely non-resistant person.

  

  Florence Scovel Shinn
  • Earth
  • Person
  • Resist

• If you don't have good people around you, it's going to be the worst thing for you.

  

  Pablo Sandoval
  • People
  • Good
  • Good People

• But I can't and don't ever want to write bell-yanking confetti-tossing hat-throwing poems.

  

  Andrew Motion
  • Writing
  • Hats
  • Bells