Writing Quotes
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Being the everyman in the writing room helps a lot: you have to be a real collaborator and selfless, and not have ego when you walk in there. That's the antithesis of the artist mentality.
Maren Morris
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The first set of lyrics for the first songs I ever wrote, which are the ones on 'Pretty Hate Machine,' came from private journal entries that I realized I was writing in lyric form.
Trent Reznor
Nine Inch Nails
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I often think I am a better person because I lived for many years of my life with a flashlight. I have developed skills I did not think were possible - bathing with a cup of water by candlelight, for instance, and writing a story with a headlamp on.
Janine di Giovanni
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[Kurt] Vonnegut was a writer whose great gift was that he always seemed to be talking directly to you. He wasn't writing, he wasn't showing off, he was just telling you, nobody else, what it was like, what it was all about. That intimacy made him beloved. We can admire the art of John Updike or Philip Roth, but we love Vonnegut.
Michael Dirda
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I've watched 'Ringu' probably three or four times before writing the first draft of 'The Ring.' And then I'd seen 'Ringu 2' I think once.
Ehren Kruger
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Directing is a more pragmatic experience, where you have to deal with the restrictions of time and money that force you to make certain decisions you don't have to make when you're writing.
Charlie Kaufman
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When you're teaching creative nonfiction, it helps to have written about your life in a very open way, because you can say, 'Look, how much are you willing to risk emotionally to write? How careful can you be with the other people you're writing about?'
Marya Hornbacher
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I am deeply sensitive to the spell of nationalism. I can play about thirty Bohemian folk songs ... on my mouth-organ. My oldest friend, who is Czech and a patriot, cannot bear to hear me play them because he says I do it in such a schmalzy way, 'crying into the mouth organ'. I do not think I could have written the book on nationalism which I did write, were I not capable of crying, with the help of a little alcohol, over folk songs, which happen to be my favourite form of music.
Ernest Gellner
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I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told, is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth.
Jane Austen
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We [with Neal Dodson and Corey Moosa] spent a lot of time writing, for lack of a better word, this manifesto about what we wanted to do. We wanted to find work that was relevant socially and that didn't take audiences for granted.
Zachary Quinto
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Is there a secret? Yes. Anaïs Nin and Pauline Réage and Anne Rampling and Erica Jong all knew it. E. L. James knows it. It is the secret behind all of our writing. And our reading. Arousal starts in the mind. And grows in the mind. The brain is the most erogenous zone in a woman’s body. That is our secret. And it is what we share.
M. J. Rose
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I do see an interest in writing for Twitter. While publishers still do love the novel and people do still like to sink into one, the very quick form is appealing because of the pace of life.
Lydia Davis
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I grew up on all of the great spy movies and TV series of the Sixties - not just Bond, but Derek Flint and the Avengers and Modesty Blaise and the Man from UNCLE and on and on. Every time I sit down to work on Cinderella, I'm writing a love letter to all of those characters.
Chris Roberson
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Combine a left-leaning upbringing with a family with direct experience of the Holocaust and someone with aspirations to write and I guess, sooner or later, that person will have a stab at writing something about the Holocaust.
Elliot Perlman
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Writing, for me, was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life.
Philip Roth
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I listen to my own music now because I'm busy writing now--I started hearing some things--I'm writing all the time. When you write you have to listen. Writing music is very difficult. At a certain level the work begins to dictate itself. I write the piano score first, then I'll set down a bass line. Sometimes I'll give the bass the bottom and I'll play subordinate tones. I use very close harmonies. I like strong rhythmic ideas, too.
Ahmad Jamal
