Writing Quotes
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When you're writing you're affected by everything that's going on around you.
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But when I started writing songs, I stopped painting completely, and the only art things I do are connected to the career, like album sleeves and, to some extent, posters and things like that.
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Does housekeeping interest you at all? I think it really ought to be just as good as writing and I never see where the separation between the too comes in. At least if you must put books on one side and life on the other, each is a poor and bloodless thing; but my theory is that they mix indistinguishable.
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When you write a short story ... you had better know the ending first. The end of a story is only the end to the reader. To the writer, it's the beginning. If you don't know exactly where you're going every minute you're writing, you'll never get there - or anywhere.
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Very early on, I was writing stories, and I was amazed at Spielberg's movies when I was young. Coming from the countryside, I was so impressed with the way he was able to tell stories and the way he was able to deal with le merveilleux - the wonders.
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I'm always trying out new stuff onstage. That's where I do all my writing.
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'Pain' is more indicative of what I like to do. I'm lyric-conscious. I like to tell stories, give advice. Instead of writing a 'Dear Abby' column, I do it on records.
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Whether you're writing a book or a song or whatever, you've got to be involved in it. It's got to come from the heart I think...that's what it's all about.
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I started writing because I got so frustrated that there weren't enough plays that had roles for young black women in them.
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I like a fine wine. Who can beat that? I don't think it helps writing; I think it's a hinderance. It helps numb you.
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We've all got to earn a living. And writing songs is what I do. But when I've done a record, it's not that I think it's better or worse than anyone else's, but if I think that nobody else would have done it if I hadn't, well then that's ok.
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Writers love to write those idiotic, long stage directions, and some of them worse than others. They have nothing to do with the movie. They're just jerking around.
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As a writer, all you want to do is write for great actors. That's all.
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Flat or uninteresting writing often signals something deeper that is being covered up.
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Writing is one of the most assertive things a person can do.
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When I first got into technology I didn't really understand what open source was. Once I started writing software, I realized how important this would be.
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Should novels generally be 600 pages? No, they should not. Half of writing, maybe 3/4 of writing, is editing. This seems to be a thing that has not gotten through to them. It’s my impression that you could get rid of half of most of these books. These people are not good enough to be this long, but they’re apparently also not good enough to be shorter.
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The process of writing a book is like the process of preparing a dinner. Serving dishes, choosing ingredients and so on.
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I actually often write about writing music and being in that zone.
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Had I guessed the trouble my name was going to cause a lot of people on the other side of the world, I would have changed it to something easier when I began writing books.
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When I'm writing the poem, I feel like I have to close my eyes. I don't mean literally, but you invite a kind of blindness, and that's the birth of the poem.
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I have to write three books a year to make a reasonable living out of writing - unless, of course, she gets a major American film deal. Phryne has been optioned since the very first book, but to make a historical TV movie, it costs $30,000 a day extra for the historical detail to be correct, so most people aren't doing it.
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When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'
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I like visceral writing that people can't help but respond to, even if they respond, and they're shocked, or they're angry, or they're offended. I think that's the only way to reach people.
