Writing Quotes
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'Writing' is the wrong way to describe what happens to words in a movie. First, you put down words. Then you rehearse them with actors. Then you shoot the words. Then you edit them. You cut a lot of them, you fudge them, you make up new ones in voice-over. Then you cut it and throw it all away.
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David Mamet's writing is pretty spectacular, obviously. I like the honesty of it; I like how funny it is and how sad it is.
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I'm always writing and reflecting on life. I want to suck it all in.
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I was writing and playing in California for 11 years before I moved to Nashville.
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I fantasised about F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' - I loved it, and then I read everything J. D. Salinger had to offer. Then I was turned on to Kerouac, and his spontaneous prose, his stream of consciousness way of writing. I admired him so much, and I romanticised so much about the '40s and '50s.
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Writing for TV entails saying every dumb idea that comes into your head to a room of people. And doing so with the confidence that it doesn't make you look like an idiot.
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As far as writing, it's grown because I've really grown comfortable with who I am.
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I like the quiet it takes to pursue an idea the way I pursued 'Hamilton,' but I couldn't write a book, because there's no applause at the end of writing a book.
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I source images and ideas from different parts of my experiences, and sometimes they are things that are made-up, or just appear out of nowhere, like out of a dream or an image that I've seen in a book, or even the title of a book that I'm staring at on a shelf. It's a good way to write songs, just stare at a bookshelf!
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I've been writing in some way, shape, or form for as long as I can remember.
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Who here wants to be a writer?' I asked. Everyone in the room raised his hand. 'Why the hell aren't you home writing?' I said, and left the stage.
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I have fun writing. I don't make it a chore. I don't have to struggle with it.
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I don't use a computer in writing at all. I'm sort of old-fashioned about it.
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Of mediumship there are many grades, one of the simplest forms being the capacity to receive an impression or automatic writing, under peaceful conditions, in an ordinary state; but the whole subject is too large to be treated here.
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I abide by a rule concerning reviews: I will never ask, neither in writing nor in person, that a word be put in about my book.... One feels cleaner this way. When someone asks that his book be reviewed he risks running up against a vulgarity offensive to authorial sensibilities.
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Re-writing is different from writing. Original writing is very difficult.
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I feel like in the reading I did when I was growing up, and also in the way that people talk and tell stories here in the South, they use a lot of figurative language. The stories that I heard when I was growing up, and the stories that I read, taught me to use the kind of language that I do. It's hard for me to work against that when I am writing.
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I think of it as the lasagna approach to writing because I'm always adding layers. I'll sometimes do it layer by layer, with dialogue, attribution, action, objects in the scene, setting... It can be sometimes that delineated.
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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 started writing my own things when I was about 8.
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I would say it's not as hard as writing, because when you're a writer, you walk right into the pit all by yourself, but when you're a director, there are at least 80 people who scream, 'Don't do that!' when you make a mistake.
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I had never read Upton Sinclair. I didn't read 'The Jungle' in high school or anything like that. But it's pretty terrific writing.
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I finally wasn't interested in writing music that played while actors talked.
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I think I would have been a writer, anyhow, in the sense of having written a story every now and then, or continued writing poetry. But it was the war experience and the two novels I wrote about Vietnam that really got me started as a professional writer.
