Writing Quotes
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When Edward Gibbon was writing about the fall of the Roman Empire in the late 18th century, he could argue that transportation hadn't changed since ancient times. An imperial messenger on the Roman roads could get from Rome to London even faster in A.D. 100 than in 1750. But by 1850, and even more obviously today, all of that has changed.
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When I was a kid, I figured I would be a physicist when I grew up, and then I would write science fiction on the side. The physicist thing didn't pan out, but writing science fiction on the side did.
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A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.
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I want to write a film. I need to think of the right idea and focus on that; I love writing.
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As long as it's making you happy and you're enjoying it, then you should never stop writing music. Whether it's going to take you somewhere, viewed by other people, or it's literally you in a bedroom at home, it should be something that you do for yourself.
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One of the greatest things about writing as a profession is that the words of Tolstoy, Chesterton and Dostoyevsky have lived for a hundred years and are just as powerful today. Their words have changed me just as much as the people I actually met.
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You're successful if you can get one person to pick it up and put it on the turntable and go, Wow, thanks for writing that!
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I have a lot of reactions to the outside world that I don't feel like would be appropriate for songs: things I'm not interested in writing about, things I don't want to think about any longer than 15 or 20 seconds.
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I've been so spoiled in the theater, writing plays where I can just do exactly what I want and nobody messes with me.
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There are so many things that come into writing a recipe, and it's really important if you're writing for home cooks to be cooking like you are at home.
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People love talking about writers as storytellers, but I hate being called that: it suggests I got it from my grandmother or something, when my writing really comes out of silence. If a storyteller came up to me, I'd run away.
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It must have been when I was 14 or 15 that I started tentatively writing songs and was able to convey an emotion and a lyric with what I wanted to say.
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I used to be something of an obsessive when it came to research. When I first began writing the Thorne novels, I would drive to a set of traffic lights in the early hours of the morning to make sure you could turn left. I thought it was important to get even the most trivial details right.
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I wrote 'Happy Man' with a couple of boys of mine. I have been writing in Nashville for a long time. Of course I was writing songs back in Oklahoma when I was a kid.
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The core of my writing is not art but truth.
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The people who review my books, generally, are kind of youngish culture writers who aspire to write books. When someone writes a book review, they obviously already self-identify as a writer. I mean, they are. They're writers, they're critics, and they're writing about a book about a writer who's a critic. So I think it's really hard for people to distance themselves from what they're criticizing.
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I tend to write things and review it afterwards and realise what comes out. I very rarely ever write something and have to take it back.
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After preliminary research, I zero in on an idea, and then I spend at least four months exploring the topic and in plot-building. I jot down every single detail of the plot as bullet points per chapter, and only when the skeleton is complete do I start writing.
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The whole trick is to make it feel like you're spying on real people's lives as they get through the day. When I'm writing, I have to trick myself as a writer. If I consciously say, 'I'm writing,' I feel all this pressure and somehow it doesn't feel as real as when it doesn't seem to count as much.
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I wasn't one of those kids who dreamed of writing novels when I was 8 or 12. I wanted to be a film director. I wanted to make big action movies. I loved movies like 'Die Hard,' 'Predator,' 'Aliens,' 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.'
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I'd like my writing to be recognized with a Grammy.
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There's sketch, improv, writing, acting, music, and badminton. Those are the seven forms of comedy. But I do like the idea of being an auteur in the sense of writing and being in your own stuff.
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I had spent five years not earning a penny, getting rejected. Thank God I had a husband who was supportive and encouraging. But I still said to myself, 'If the Everleighs doesn't sell, I'm finished with writing forever.' I was going to get an office job.
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She's blonde with all the hits. Taylor Swift. She's hot. More than that, she's beyond talented. I have to write a song with her.
