Writing Quotes

• Writing the first draft is like hitting the beach on D Day. You don't stop to mourn the dead or comfort the wounded. You get off the beach because, if you don't, you'll die there.

  

  Matt Hughes
  • Stop
  • Die
  • Beach

• 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.

  

  Sabina Murray
  • Work
  • Thinking
  • Trying

• When I come across writing that really moves me and inspires me, my reaction is twofold. I want to share it with others and I want to draw something that is worthy of it. I love finding quotes that stop people-that really make them think. And I love the idea that my work, combined with meaningful words, can provide comfort or inspiration to someone.

  

  Mary Elizabeth Lease
  • People
  • Work
  • Words

• Writing with kids is an adventure. It seems like someone always has the flu or pink-eye. I mean, you don't even have to be in direct contact with anyone to get pink-eye. But for parents who write, flexibility becomes essential, and as long as I have a pad of paper and a pen, I can write anywhere. Starbucks is fine.

  

  Claire Messud
  • Long
  • Kids
  • Parents

• I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton's head.

  

  Anthony Clifford Grayling
  • Together
  • Science
  • Fall

• When the time is right to release another Mike & The Mechanics album, the three of us get together and we start writing new material out of an acoustic setting.

  

  Mike Rutherford Genesis
  • Writing
  • Album
  • Release

• When I first seriously decided to become a cartoonist would have been '99/2000, right before 9/11. I've been writing and illustrating stories in the world post-9/11 since then, watching the world change around me.

  

  Jeff Lemire
  • World
  • Writing

• If someone decides to be a musician now, it means because there is no hope of money at the end of it, it means they really want to be a musician. And if someone is writing now, there is no hope for money at the end of it.

  

  Douglas Coupland
  • Writing
  • Money
  • Hope

• I don't really usually write sort of a cheerleader-type lyric.

  

  Rachael Yamagata
  • Type
  • Lyric
  • Cheerleader

• If you are writing comedy and try to please everybody, you'll please nobody.

  

  Brendan O'Carroll
  • Writing
  • Comedy

• I've been writing about James Fenimore Cooper. He was not a writer. Here was a man who was 30 years old and had never put anything more than his signature on paper.

  

  Leslie Fiedler
  • Writing

• I think I became a writer because I used to write letters to my friends, and I used to love writing them. I loved the idea that you can put marks on a page and send it off, and two days later, someone laughs somewhere else in the world.

  

  David Nicholls
  • World
  • Writing
  • Friends

• I'm always writing at night - things I would change, things I would do differently. When I write a note, it sticks in my head differently.

  

  Don Mattingly
  • Writing
  • Night

• When you write an album and you're writing about relationships, the stuff that I've been through in my relationships, 99 percent of it is really good, but it's that one percent that always inspires you to write a song.

  

  Kris Allen
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Song

• I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose.

  

  P. G. Wodehouse
  • Writing
  • Know
  • Just

• Conspiracies fascinate me. When I visited the Rozabal shrine in Srinagar before writing my first book, I remember thinking that the person enshrined there was no ordinary mortal. History is rife with mysteries, and that visit ignited a fire to unveil some of them.

  

  Ashwin Sanghi
  • Thinking
  • Book
  • Remember

• The more practice you have, the less stressful writing is.

  

  Edwidge Danticat
  • Writing
  • Practice
  • Stressful

• I was quiet, and I was artistic. I liked writing poetry, and that was very strange, so I was bullied a lot.

  

  Nelsan Ellis
  • Writing
  • Poetry

• I never consciously choose what I'm going to work on next; I don't have an agenda beyond that attraction. Fortunately, my wonderful agent, Christopher Schelling, knows how I think and points me toward things I might like, which is how I started writing Y.A.

  

  Kathe Koja
  • Work
  • Writing

• I had no idea I'd end up writing four books when I completed 'Mortal Engines.' I didn't even think it would find a publisher.

  

  Philip Reeve
  • Up
  • Writing

• I like to joke that you usually write more books before death than after death, so that's why I'm doing it. But really, I remain engaged with ideas. There are so many things happening that turn me on and I just want to examine them.

  

  T. C. Boyle
  • Why
  • Book
  • Death

• If you're a playwright, unless you're really lacking in get-up-and-go, you can always get your play up somewhere. You can't necessarily make a living doing it, but theater is about meeting an audience. Plays are not easier to write necessarily, they take less time to write. If you get them up, it's a much more rough-and-tumble kind of existence. I think it's, from my perspective, easier than novel writing.

  

  Tony Kushner
  • Up
  • Time
  • Thinking

• I love writing.

  

  Bonnie Hunt
  • Writing

• I naively thought I would quit television writing, move up to Seattle, my novel would come out, and then I'd have a novel writing career, and so I found myself really stuck in this very poisonous self-pitying state and felt like I'd never write again. And I blamed Seattle for that.

  

  Maria Semple
  • Up
  • Writing
  • Career

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