Writing Quotes
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I can write for weeks or months sometimes and edit it down to a song. I feel like it's a piece of music that will hopefully stand the test of time and hopefully capture a moment in history if I'm doing it correctly and honestly.
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Writing at the 'American Spectator' in the 1990s, we threw everything we thought would stick at President Clinton.
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As a kid I wanted to write science fiction, and I was never without a book. Later I really got into being a scientist and never thought I'd be writing novels.
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I don't think I will ever write about politics or foreign policy. I feel like there is so much good writing in those areas that I have little to add. I also like to steer clear of writing about people whom I do not personally like.
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I was trying to write a straightforward book of sociological analysis, or at least cultural criticism, and I failed.
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The easy answer is that writing novels is a lot more fun than practicing law.
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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.
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What I have to say is all in the music. If I want to say anything, I write a song.
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I studied classical guitar in school, and that type of stuff has led to writing for Kronos.
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With comedy, I think it's so important, especially in TV, to know and trust what the writers are writing and just have it down.
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My writing practice taught me the important thing is steadfastness. It's not necessarily discipline. Discipline can become a prison. When your spiritual practices become another thing for you to be anxious about, they've lost their usefulness.
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When you write a book for publication, you're writing it for other people to read.
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I've never been much of a craftsman, in an educated way. But I think just the experience of writing makes the avenues I follow a little more efficient in some ways. At the same time, when you're young, you're a little more fearless, and there's less of an internal critic.
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One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with one's words.
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I started writing 'Southern Baptist Sissies' right after I had written the screenplay for 'Sordid Lives', so that's when I started on a darker path in telling the truth about my journey in the church, but there was still a lot of funny.
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If you know everything, it keeps you from writing. You don't want a story to burn you out instead of surprising you.
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The wonderful thing about writing for theatre is you can go anywhere you want with the language. There are no limits. With film, they frown on language - it's always 'Too many words.'
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Joseph Conrad and Heart of Darkness loom huge in my development as a writer. I think I'm always trying to write Heart of Darkness - trying to explode an abstraction in concrete terms, although I am aware that Conrad's story has a bit of baggage that I'd rather avoid in my work.
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There's something special about writing by hand, writing with a fountain pen, and there's something special about writing into a book, to take a blank book and turn it into an actual book.
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When I'm writing, I generally toy with an idea until it manifests itself - meaning a phrase or a tune comes into my head and eventually begins to jell. When something hits me, I write it down immediately. I don't wait, or it's gone.
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Great writing can be done in biography, history, art.
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I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.
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After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction.
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You won't see me writing about particle physics, or even planetary geology, or chemistry. I practically failed chemistry, and if I had to write a book in any of those areas, I don't think it would go well.
