Writing Quotes
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I think that if I get into the habit of writing a bit about what happens, or rather doesn't happen, I may lose a little of the sense of isolation and desolation which abides with me. My circumstances allowing of nothing but the ejaculation of one-syllabled reflections, a written monologue by that most interesting being, myself, may have its yet to be discovered consolations.
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I both admired my father and his writing, and I saw how much he valued it.
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Life throws up enough road blocks to keep you from writing; you can't be adding to them yourself by saying you can only write in one specific place. I'm in New York half the time and Texas half the time, and I work wherever - in my computer bag I have some foam ear plugs that I can put in.
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'Et Tu, Babe' was born out of my absolute certainty that a writer's life was solitary and insular, and I was happy with that. I love reading and writing; it's my whole life.
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Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.
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If I wasn't writing poems I'd be washing my hands all the time.
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I started writing screenplays myself and eventually directing.
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Domesticity is the enemy of art. I don't know if that's true. You can write good happy songs. So, I don't think it's necessarily happiness. But I think self-satisfaction is maybe the enemy. It's kind of better to think, "Tomorrow night I'm gonna sing it better." There is this forward effort. It feels to me right, it feels human.
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I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are - they sort of tap dance through it.
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What I really like is the marriage of both [writing and acting] - for instance, with Postcards. I don't actually act in it, but I worked on it with Mike [Nichols] as I went along, creating the character, so it was a bit like acting for me.
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Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home.
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I just kind of go with what I am feeling and don't think I have any kind of recipe for it... I mean, that's what drew me into writing. It's fun, and sometimes you don't get a great song. Sometimes you do.
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In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery.
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One of the most attractive things about writing your autobiography is that you're not dead.
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For my writing, and because I love talking to young women about life, I often asked them which would they rather have - a father in the house with them while growing up or a big butt? I tell you 86 percent of the time, girls say a big butt because it gets them further.
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I believe I drank too much wine last night at Hurstbourne; I know not how else to account for the shaking of my hand today. You will kindly make allowance therefore for any indistinctness of writing, by attributing it to this venial error.
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I can see a version of my life where it all becomes meaningless. On a good day, writing seems noble. Other times, it's narcissistic and pointless.
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If the writing is good, then the writing is already funny. All you have to do is make this funny writing true to the very deepest of your heart, and the fact that you are capable of making this true will be hysterical.
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Writing music on your own makes you think a lot about your life. Who are you? Would you change anything about yourself? This is where it comes from.
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We expect to keep our writing sessions going until late spring, then to play some new material in a few secret club dates. The record will likely take a long time and may not surface until 1999!
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There's one thing I know for sure: When I'm most opinionated, my writing sucks.
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When I'm writing with just an acoustic guitar, it can be for anyone.
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Of course the playing is important but writing and the establishing of what you are going for is prime too.
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I've always assumed from the beginning that I had relatively few contemporaries among my readership. Not that I was consciously writing for a younger audience but that what I was doing interested a younger audience, or at least threatened them less.