Writing Quotes
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My cure for writer's block is to step away from the thing I'm stuck on, usually a novel, and write something totally different. Besides fiction, I write poetry, screenplays, essays and journalism. It's usually not the writing itself that I'm stuck on, but thing I'm trying to write. So I often have four or five things going at once.
Jess Walter
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I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, 'Would he had blotted a thousand'.
Ben Jonson
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For me, 'risky' is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.
Taylor Swift
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People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children's book. I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book', but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable.
Martin Amis
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With my writing, I can still play inside an enchanted castle or live inside an old fort. I can run from ghosts or ride dolphins any day of the week.
Mary Pope Osborne
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Writing on a computer makes saving what's been written too easy. Pretentious lead sentences are kept, not tossed. Instead of sitting surrounded by crumpled paper, the computerized writer has his mistakes neatly stored in digital memory.
P. J. O'Rourke
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My hands are already full writing and directing, because that's a full time job. Actually, that's why I don't produce as well, as there's already enough producers.
David Twohy
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I just start singing some words with a tune. I don't ever write a song thinking, Now I'll write a song about... .
Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney and Wings
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[Alex] Haley had a tendency to write even more frequently and voluminously to his agents and his editors than he did putting pen to paper in his own books.
Manning Marable
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Oh, it's essential. I mean, you have to - if I'm writing about the Middle East, I have to go there, and if possible, stay long enough to get a real feeling for what's going on.
Joe Sacco
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Some critics said, 'Hey, why are you writing historical novels?' I say they're not historical, they're contemporary, because people walking around who lived through this, even a little bit, they carry it inside. The contemporary isn't just what you can see now.
Per Petterson
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I've discovered as an author that the process of writing a novel becomes harder over time, not easier. I used to think the reverse must be true, that it would be like any task, and the more I practiced, the more adept I'd become.
Tawni O'Dell
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When I'm creating characters, I definitely think of theme songs. Writing for me is very visual, so I sometimes think of it in terms of a movie with a soundtrack, and try to transfer that to words.
Marisha Pessl
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If I had to pick an artist that I look up to and am inspired by, it's Matisse because of how many times he would paint the same idea until he felt like he maybe got it right, and I try to do the same thing with my writing.
Frankie Cosmos
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Writing a novel is like making love, but it's also like having a tooth pulled. Pleasure and pain. Sometimes it's like making love while having a tooth pulled.
Dean Koontz
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Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.
Andre Breton
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There are other types of public appearances a writer does in addition to book signings and readings. Each calls for different skills. None of these skills, needless to say, are those that go into writing books.
Jane Lindskold
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It seems the more I play Jane Austen, the more poetic my writing becomes. The other day, I left a Post-it note for my husband that had the word 'ergo' on it. I gotta rein it in before I get all full out Madonnannoying.
Donna Lynne Champlin