Writing Quotes
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Even when there's not a joke or a hook, the first line has to be good and snapem to attention. Songs ain't novels. You don't have 30 pages to slowly wrap somebody in. They're more like short stories or poems. If the first line hasn't grabbed them, you won't get to the second line. Once you've developed an audience, you may have some luxury and trust, so you don't have to knock 'em over the head with line one.
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I was a Social Science major in college, with an emphasis in secondary education. I took as many courses on the American colonial era and westward expansion as I could. This turned out to be wonderful preparation for writing fantasy novels.
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I think the computer is a hindrance to good writing because it is so tempting to leave what you've written. If you use a typewriter, you must retype if you make a mistake, and thus, you must re-examine every word.
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I just love writing songs and singing them. People seem to enjoy them, and that's all you can really ask for. I didn't get into it to try to be a celebrity or whatever.
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Acting is glamour but writing is hard work, so I'm going to be an actress.
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Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.
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People say my music is English. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's not me writing English music, but that English music is becoming more like me.
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I don't write all the time. But if I'm writing something, I'll just bang into it every day until it's finished. I write pretty quickly.
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The great thing for me, now, is that writing has become more and more interesting. Not just as a craft but as a way into things that are not described. It's a thing of discovering. That's when writing is really working. You're on the trail of something, and you don't quite know what it is.
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As an actor, we always want people to write about us and talk about us. And when they are actually writing, then we say, 'Don't write about this.' I am an actor; I am a public property. I don't own myself; public owns me.
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I think writing and singing go together, but I treat them as two separate careers because I write for others. If I'm writing for myself, I prefer to be with the producer. And then we can vibe out and throw ideas back and forth, and I'll basically let the producer play me a bunch of beats until I vibe with one.
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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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Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.
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I have always admired teachers because teaching, like the priesthood, medicine and writing, is a vocation. You don't become a teacher because you want wealth. It is the same with writing.
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Writing is the beast unto itself.
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I'll probably stay in Copenhagen... I can keep writing songs about my local community and about crime.
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I was writing my Ph.D. in the late 1980s and was keeping an eye on what was happening in the world. It became obvious to me that Russia couldn't live without computers. I think I worked this out a year before anyone else. I started looking for people who could help import them.
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I started a novel back in high school. It wasn't very good. It was the opposite of good. The writing itself wasn't too bad, and the characters were interesting. But the story was a mess, and it was full of fantasy cliches. Dwarf with an axe. Barbarian warrior. I don't ever think I'd bother finishing that. It's just not worth my time.
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I write as straight as I can, just as I walk as straight as I can, because that is the best way to get there.
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I've been writing since I'm five years old. I've been writing books since high school - junior high, high school. I write every single day. I never thought I'd be published.
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The biographies of the great men see their excesses as signs of their greatness. But Jean Rhys, in her biography, is read as borderline; Anaïs Nin is borderline; Djuna is borderline; etc. etc. Borderline personality disorder being an overwhelmingly gendered diagnosis. I write in Heroines: “The charges of borderline personality disorder are the same charges against girls writing literature, I realize - too emotional, too impulsive, no boundaries."
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I'm like the opposite of one of those comedians who's funny on stage and depressed behind closed doors . On record, I can get pretty dark, but in real life I'm very carefree. But when I'm happy, I ain't writing songs, I'm out having a laugh, being in love. I wouldn't have the time. If I ever get married, it'll be 'Darling, I need a divorce, it's been three years, I've got a record to write!'
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What do you want? What are you willing to give up to get it? Writing requires you make sacrifices. Be prepared to work hard to be a writer.
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I have to strip away all the layers when I'm writing the song. I have to cut through all these layers of years of putting up walls and putting protective layers around myself.
