Writing Quotes
-
By the time I joined the 'Washington Post' sports staff in 1979, Red's Runyonesque notion of sports writing was obsolete.
-
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.
-
I get a lot of 'Oh, you've been gone.' I wasn't gone. Just because you didn't see me doesn't mean I wasn't working and collecting checks. I just wasn't singing and doing videos. I do a lot of other things, like I said, like writing scripts and stuff like that. I write for other artists.
-
I've been writing in some way, shape, or form for as long as I can remember.
-
If you read the first page of one of my novels, I can guarantee that you will read the last one. This isn't just social commentary. This is also about writing good page-turners. I want people to keep reading.
-
I've got a particular way of writing novels, and that carries over into the way I write comics and games, too. I'm a news journalist by background, so I approach everything as reporting - I treat it as real, I ask the questions I'd ask in a real situation, and I let the characters speak for themselves.
-
Follow your instincts. Do the kind of writing you love to do and do best. 'Stiff' was an oddball book - I mean, a funny book about cadavers? - and I worried that it would be too unconventional. In the end, that's what has made it a success, I think.
-
I started writing one afternoon when I was twenty, and ever since then I have written every day. At first I had to force myself. Then it became part of my identity, and I did it without thinking.
-
If I can't sing them myself, there's nothing better than writing songs for other people and watching them be performed. It's kind of more thrilling than doing it yourself.
-
When I was writing about the Republican primaries, it was as though the Bible was a black box that people reached into to pull out edicts and prejudices and rules and opinions, and I wish they had fact-checked it! Especially Rick Santorum.
-
Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope, some day, to find something to say.
-
Great writing makes great television.
-
I start with an idea that is no more than a paragraph long, and expand it slowly into an outline. But I'm always surprised by the directions things take when I actually start writing.
-
Writing music is just like writing a book.
-
To be honest, writing comics is a dream come true - the form is unparalleled and is home to some of the most original and innovative storytelling around.
-
Being in a rock band is about touring. It's about writing songs and it's about making records but it's also about taking a wonderful smile onto that stage and making the people feel good about themselves.
-
It's very strange writing science fiction in a world that moves as fast as ours does.
-
With my human rights advocacy, that's always been through my writing. I've always tried to write articles and contribute to journals and a lot of online journals - about human rights, especially Palestinian human rights. I find the time to do things to do things I'm passionate about, because I find enjoyment in them. I just have to juggle.
-
Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones.
-
When I was in graduate school, I had a teacher who said to me, 'Women writers should marry somebody who thinks writing is cute. Because if they really realised what writing was, they would run a mile.'
-
People have told me that everything about me, every facet of my life, psyche, experiences, dreams, and fears, are laid out explicitly in my writing, that from the corpus of my work I can be absolutely and precisely inferred. This is true.
-
I've had students at Yale: my main task with them in drama school was not helping them with their writing but showing them how valuable they were. Because they're ready to give it up and go into teaching or television.
-
If I knew anything about what people wanted and was popular, I'd still be writing for 'Saturday Night Live'. I can only write what I want, and hopefully people will like it.
-
A lot of journalists are talented enough to write a mystery novel, and I would say that most of the top-end mystery writers actually started out as reporters. But there is more to it than just the writing; there's a learning process, and most journalists aren't willing to do it.
