Writing Quotes
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I try not to be overly literal. When I'm writing songs, I write down a lot of words, and then I try to simplify it. I like to give people hints or words that make visual pictures for them.
Neko Case
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Humor writing requires a rhythm and timing, as well as some kind of connection to the reader, and I think that's how I tap into it.
Kristan Higgins
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Smoking cigarettes and writing something nasty on the wall, teacher sends you to the Principal's office down the hall.
Stevie Wonder
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Have a working spouse, because you won't earn a living from writing - not at first, if ever. My wife worked for years to support us.
Piers Anthony
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I guess I'm a really analytical person, but when I'm writing, all that stuff goes behind a screen. Analysis and taking things apart is really important and really interesting, but it's the direct opposite of creating something, which has to do with taking things and putting them together and hoping to make something unique that's more than the sum of its parts. And you can't do that with analysis, you can only take things into smaller and smaller pieces.
Will Sheff
Okkervil River
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The spiritual writing of the song is where you're chosen as a vehicle, and it comes from something up above. You don't move; it writes itself. It's very spooky, but that's happened to me just a few times.
Neil Sedaka
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I hate this idea that I've somehow become detached. It's like I can't win. I'd been hearing all these years that I was too hands-on: that I was the guy writing out the lineup card. Now, I'm not present enough. How is it possible to be a detached micromanager?
Billy Beane
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As a children's author, you get to advocate for reading and writing in general, in a way an adult author might not be able to. It's a really interesting dance we do to get literature into the hands of young people and to help them to become literate and become readers; we want them to grow up reading and continue to do so when they're adults.
Deborah Wiles
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I just remember really loving words and writing about anything I could, and the way I'd remember things, like my library card number, was to make a melody.
Julia Carin Cavazos
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We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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New Directions is a reviewer’s nightmare; it’s enough punishment to read it all, without writing about it too.
Randall Jarrell
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There are two different ways of writing a novel. The first I call the traditional father way, when the novelist slightly situates himself or herself above the text and knows what each and every character is going to do. It's a bit like engineering. I've never felt close to that tradition. I like the second way, which relies a bit more on intuition.
Elif Safak
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As an observer, I'm analysing my reactions, I guess, and my thinking; but about the process of writing... I am not very talented at talking about what I do as a writer.
Janet Malcolm
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My father read poetry to me, encouraged me to memorize poems. But the writing of it was quite a different thing.
C. K. Williams
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When I'm writing with just an acoustic guitar, it can be for anyone.
Daniel Quine Auerbach
The Arcs
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I'll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.
O. Henry
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Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs.
John Backus
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We're always writing music no matter what. And we're not always acting - we have months off. But we never take a break from songwriting.
Alex Wolff
