Writing Quotes
-
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
-
Dad thought something very fishy was going on when, at 22, I was offered a job for £1,000 a year - more than Dad paid his own staff - for inventing cheese recipes and writing leaflets at the Dutch Dairy Bureau in London.
Mary Berry
-
I like to think that I am telling a story rather than writing it.
Alistair MacLeod
-
Writing is my salvation. If I didn't write, what would I do?
Maxine Kumin
-
Sorrow, it is said, will make even an oyster feel poetical. I never tried my hand at that sort of writing but on this particular occasion such was my state of feeling, that I began to fancy myself inspired; so I took pen in hand, and as usual I went ahead.
Davy Crockett
-
Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black looked at in the right light and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart.
H. G. Wells
-
Bad writing is like a bad relationship. Don't be addicted to it just because you are familiar with its ways. Let go.
Elif Safak
-
The professorial dictum has always been to write what you know, but I say write what you don't know and find something out. And it works.
T. C. Boyle
-
I guess the wildcard here is Terrence Malick. He supervised me while I was writing the script for Beautiful Country, and he is a genius, although not always easy to follow. What I learned from him is that the narrative can be tracked through all kinds of scenes, that the strong narrative thread is not always the one that is most obvious. Creating narrative with Malick was a bit like chasing a butterfly through a jungle. This approach to narrative is fun and complicated, something that makes the process of writing constantly interesting to this writer.
Sabina Murray
-
I think that, in principle, a workshop is such a beautiful idea - an environment in which writers who are collectively apprenticed to the craft of writing can come together in order to collectively improve.
Eleanor Catton
-
Whether it's writing a monologue or writing standup or writing a screenplay or writing a play, I think staying involved in the creation of your own work empowers you in a way, even if you don't ever do it. It gives you a sense of ownership and a sense of purpose, which I think as an actor is really important.
Denis O'Hare
-
Graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate. Images are a way of writing. When you have the talent to be able to write and to draw, it seems a shame to choose one. I think it's better to do both.
Marjane Satrapi
-
It was always very important for us that we presented ourselves as a band, because it's a three-part writing process and it's a three-part decision making process, it's not two producer guys and a girl that sings the songs. It's startling how many people make that assumption.
Lauren Mayberry
Chvrches
-
I thought if I really wanted to be serious about writing, I should make my own desk.
Brad Barkley
-
When you start early, and you're writing for free, there's a lot of producers that will take advantage of you... It is seared in my brain forever.
Allison Schroeder
-
I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.
Flannery O'Connor
-
It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days.
Alan Furst
-
In writing the book I wanted to make it very clear that I feel prostitution should be decriminalized. But some people might have breezed by those aspects that others took the time to notice. In All I Could Bare, I hope I relate in a conversational way how stripping is a lot like other types of work.
Craig Seymour
