Writing Quotes
-
By the time I was at college, I became very alert to the question of racial discrimination, and I remember one of my first writing attempts had to do with a lynching.
-
Usually, writing lyrics for me is like bleeding drop by drop from the forehead.
-
No writing has any real value which is not the expression of genuine thought and feeling. (20 December 1939)
-
I spend my life writing fiction, so reading fiction isn't much of an escape. That's not always true, but I don't read much contemporary fiction.
-
I was in Siena and decided I wanted to write a story set there. Then I discovered that the original story of Romeo and Juliet was set in Siena. It occurred to me that this was too much of a gift - I had to do it. That's how I ended up writing a parallel story to Romeo and Juliet.
-
I'm writing for my ideal reader, for somebody who's willing to take the time, who's willing to get lost in a new world, who's willing to do their part. But then I have to do my part and give them a sound and a voice that they believe in enough to keep going.
-
I usually write very few stage directions. I think a lot of that is a waste of time. The art of screenwriting is in its terseness, saying a lot with a little. I have no patience when I read a script where the writer describes this guy and what he's wearing and his glasses and his hair.
-
In writing, you discover interior sonorities in words. Dipthongs sound differently beneath the pen. One hears them with their sounds divorced.
-
The first job I had with what you might call human dignity, meaning with an office of my own and a bit of self-determination, was in technical writing, and only after I moved to Tel Aviv, where being a native English speaker is a meal ticket.
-
When I'm writing a story, I try to reduce it to the barest possible components and go from there.
-
The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.
-
When I'm writing, I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience, rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived, you know?
-
Writing a mystery is more difficult than other kinds of books because a mystery has a certain framework that must be superimposed over the story.
-
I always loved singing and writing poetry. I always loved music, and I've loved writing my whole life. When I put them together, it was probably in my early 20s where I put words to music for the first time.
-
Researching real history has taught me to be bolder and more imaginative in building fantasy worlds and writing fantasy characters, to seek out the margins of history and the forgotten tales that illuminate the whole, complex truth of our flawed yet wondrous nature as a species.
-
I actually love writing for teens best. I had such an awful time in my own teen years - I love having the chance to relive them through my fiction.
-
Writing 'This Is Who I Am...' I wanted to write a song about where I'm at, that I have accepted where I have come to and I wanted my fans to be able to connect to it too. I want them to stand proud!
-
Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.
-
There's always a part of my brain saying: 'Stop getting comfortable. Don't relax.' Because I find it difficult to write when I'm happy. I have to go out there and get battered up and bruised to write anything. I have to feel something.
-
To me, the best writing points to something literal or common but is also nuanced: The moment when somebody is telling you they love you while simultaneously disappointing you. Everybody's experienced that.
-
Harry: This book belongs to Harry Potter. Ron: Shared by Ron Weasley, because his fell apart. Hermione: Why don't you buy a new one then? Ron: Write on your own book, Hermione. Hermione: You bought all those dungbombs on Saturday. You could have bought a new book instead. Ron: Dungbombs rule.
-
It's not manufacturers trying to rip anybody off or anything like that. There's nobody getting rich writing software that I know of.
-
Writing, for me, is very inspiration-dependent. And inspiration can be a jerk.
-
I love teaching creative writing, and I think I'm good at it, but in a different life, I could have been teaching elementary school.
