Writing Quotes
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First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.
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I've been writing full-time since about 1984 - mostly magazine features and columns.
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I continue to wish that writing were easier, that it would flow out completely perfect with no need for revisions.
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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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I lived at home off and on until I was 37. I have about a million college credits. I'd worry about writing about anyone else because I'd be invading their privacy, but you can use your mom and dad and their dog for everything!
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I'm not a polemicist; I had no business writing a polemic.
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I read less of everything now. With only fond memories of others' work, it will be interesting to give my own journal writing a try now.
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Whether it's string writing or whatever, I try to write for what each instrumentalist can do best.
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I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.
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An author who enjoys writing may sometimes please other people by accident, but he can never pass on to any one else the zestful thrill he feels himself.
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Writing is manual labor of the mind - like laying pipe.
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All archaeologists in Israel and Palestine make use of the New Testament Gospels. They do this because the Gospels exhibit verisimilitude. In short, the Gospels help archaeologists know where to dig and they help archaeologists understand what they unearth. The 2nd-century Gospels and Gospel-like writings rarely exhibit verisimilitude, so archaeologists rarely appeal to them.
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I think I get certain pleasure from writing what I'm performing.
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If you can't write your song in half an hour, you're in trouble - which is always true.
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I like hearing other writers just about the way they approach writing. It gives me energy for my own work. It's weird; I'm always taking notes about fiction when I'm listening to people talk about craft.
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My writing has gone to bits - like my character. I am simply a self-conscious nerve in pain.
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I never really tell anyone what I'm writing beforehand because I usually don't know what it will be.
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You could write the entire history of science in the last 50 years in terms of papers rejected by Science or Nature.
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Readers who claim a preference for short-form over long often tell me it's because they don't have time to commit to a book-length chunk of writing.
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With directing, you have to wake up early, which stinks, but you get to hang out with the crew, you're laughing, you're active, and you're working with the actors. It's just more fun than writing. Writing is very hard.
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To just write one song to then go and play huge festivals all around the world it's exciting and it's never really been the case.
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If you're a serious publisher, you publish books because they work. In other words, they are written well; the reader identifies with the characters. The context seems to be real whether he's writing about the French Revolution or the failure of Lehman Brothers.
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The fear of a work becoming dated is one of the most effective tools for keeping people from writing political work.
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I'm always drawn to writing things that feel like uncharted territory.
