Writing Quotes
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Writing is taking a risk, and it is actually fighting invisible and invincible enemies. They are over-confidence, stupidity, expectation and narcissism.
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True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
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Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It's the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument.
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I write all the time. The wonderful thing about having a cell phone is that if I get an idea, I knock it out and it's in my phone and I can transfer it to my computer and go into the studio and bring it up.
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I was half asleep lying there writing this lyric in my head at about 3:30 in the morning. I woke Steve up with this idea and then we went into the living room where there was a little upright piano and finished the song. I wonder where that piano is now?
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You know when you're writing, and it's just you and the computer screen, and you never think that anyone is ever going to read it... you're able to say private things when you're writing.
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No matter what kind of writing you do, it's always the details that make the story.
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My favorite period is World War II, and I'm in the middle of writing my fourth novel set in that era.
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I can remember being eight, and I like writing about that age of innocence when children still have a sense of wonder.
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Some of the best things that have happened in my stories have happened seemingly of their own accord. The writer becomes a listener, just writing things down as they come.
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When you're a writer, your song has to resonate with the person you're writing for in order for them to want to sing it. But if you're an artist, you can sing whatever you want.
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While people argue with one another about the specifics of Freud's work and blame him for the prejudices of his time, they overlook the fundamental truth of his writing, his grand humility: that we frequently do not know our own motivations in life and are prisoners to what we cannot understand. We can recognize only a small fragment of our own, and an even smaller fragment of anyone else's, impetus.
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For me, writing post-apocalyptic novels isn't so much about exploding helicopters and fifty-megaton doomsday bombs as it is about the pleasure of dealing with the best of everything that makes us human: cleverness, grit, loyalty, and self-sacrifice.
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It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefoot friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
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I don't think there's any topic a writer should feel afraid of tackling just because it has already been discussed. If you feel you have a fresh perspective and an understanding of a certain emotional truth, it's always worth writing.
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[Vladimir] Lenin died in January, 1924; three months later [Joseph] Stalin expounded in writing Lenin's conception of the proletarian revolution.
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There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing.
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A blend of fact and fiction has been used in various forms since the dawn of creative writing, starting with sagas and epic poems.
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When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.
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I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along.
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No writing has any real value which is not the expression of genuine thought and feeling. (20 December 1939)
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I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton's head.
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Any doctor will admit that any drug can have side effects, and that writing a prescription involves weighing the potential benefits against the risks.
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When I'm writing, I'm focusing more on just the basic melody and the lyrics.
