Writing Quotes
-
I've become a day writer: most people start as night writers, and I used to be, but something happened to my endocrine system. I do miss the 3 A.M. writing jags.
-
What happens on 'Mad Men' in terms of the acting and the writing and the directing, it's superior. And yes, it has tremendous cache and buzz because it's become iconic, but it also deserves all the kudos and the awards as well, because it's a beautiful show to look at.
-
I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.
-
I still think I'm writing Nancy Drew with a mortgage.
-
When writing fiction, you only have to know enough to be convincing on the page. I mean really convincing, of course - but you don't need academic depth.
-
I honestly believe that everything I know about the writing of non-fiction (or writing) could be engraved on the head of a pin with a garden hoe.
-
There's no better teacher for writing than reading... Get a library card. That's the best investment.
-
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.
-
There is nothing - nothing - like writing a great joke and having that joke kill onstage.
-
I try to cope by doing what I do, what I find purpose and joy in. For me, that has been writing and playing ball. It doesn't make the pain go away, but what else can I do?
-
I missed my father so much when he died that writing about his life and mine was a way of bringing him back to life and getting me to sort of understand more about him and what made him the father, the husband and the man that he was, and how that made me the man, husband and father that I am.
-
Easy reading is damn hard writing.
-
If there's a therapist who wants a writing project, I think there's a need for a book about how the culture affects the mental health of boys.
-
I have acting technique; I have singing technique; I don't have a writing technique to fall back on.
-
The first accepted piece of writing is the most exciting. No other publishing experience matches it. Perhaps jaundice sets in, or expectations are raised, or one starts to think that one is better than is the truth.
-
Save the gerund and screw the whale.
-
Writing is part intuition and part trial and error, but mostly it's very hard work.
-
You have to go where the good writing is.
-
When I write, I use an Underwood #5 made in 1920. Someone gave me an electric typewriter, but there's no use pretending you can use machinery that thinks faster than you do. An electric typewriter is ready to go before I have anything to say.
-
There comes a point when you're writing a novel when you're in it so deep that the life of the novel becomes more real to you than life itself. You have to write your way out of it; once you're there, it's too late to abandon.
-
I suppose that being moved to write a song is more applicable to me, I have to be moved, I have to have a reason to write a particular song.
-
I have only one loyalty - to my writing. I never wanted to be the head of a studio or a producer.
-
All writing is an antisocial act, since the writer is a man who can speak freely only when alone; to be himself he must lock himself up, to communicate he must cut himself off from all communication; and in this there is something always a little mad.
-
What I have to say is all in the music. If I want to say anything, I write a song.
