Writing Quotes
-
'Hound Dog' took like twelve minutes. That's not a complicated piece of work. But the rhyme scheme was difficult. Also the metric structure of the music was not easy. 'Kansas City' was maybe eight minutes, if that. Writing the early blues was spontaneous. You can hear the energy in the work.
-
You write the way you think about the world. My motto in times of trouble - and I'm speaking of life, not writing - is 'no humor too black.'
-
I'm always really comfortable writing strong, smart ladies. That's kind of my bailiwick.
-
New songs are why artists go on the road. That's why I go on the road. It's a three-prong play. Writing: You're intrigued. Recording: It brings it to life. And then you want to share it.
-
Manipulating shadows and tonality is like writing music or a poem.
-
Writing allows me the time to travel and see the world, which is what I always wanted to do. I'd really like to have been Sir Richard Francis Burton, but it's the wrong century.
-
American actors are very different to British actors who have generally studied and been brought up culturally with the sense that the writer is the star and that their job is to serve the writing. Whereas Hollywood actors are brought up to believe that the actor is the star, and everything and everybody is in the service of them.
-
I should think it extremely improbable that anyone ever wrote for money. Naturally, when he has written something, he wants to get as much for it as he can, but that is a very different thing from writing for money.
-
College was a wonderful time to really explore my interests. I ended up writing my senior thesis about gender inequality in the developing world.
-
I realized, in removing or rewriting these jokes, that often the jokes weren't done or that I was using, for me, the curse words as kind of a crutch. So then I just started writing.
-
There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.
-
At least for me, writing a book is continual exposure to blind spots. There were things I wanted to be true and wanted to believe, but it always got more complicated in the fiction.
-
My biggest ritual is writing at home more than on the road. I do very little writing on the road. Actually, it's funny to bring this into it, but one thing I always do is have a cup of coffee. I drink the most coffee when I'm writing songs.
-
One of the tricks to writing great plays is to get people in a room together and not let them leave. You want the tension to escalate. Keeping them there is the hardest part, so you have to take away any excuse for them to leave.
-
It's an interesting point about sisters not getting the same attention as parents and children, and even brothers. I suspect it's just because women didn't count that much and weren't the ones writing the accounts.
-
The amount of response I get, in both a negative and a positive context, is completely related to the amount of books I sell, I think. It seems to have nothing to do with what I'm writing, but what degree of success I'm perceived to have. It's really weird, especially since I spent so much of my life covering people who are famous. It's interesting to actually have it happen to me on some level.
-
Writing doesn't come easily to me. It gets more and more difficult.
-
Our lives are songs; God write the words And we set them to music at pleasure; And the song grows glad, or sweet or sad, As we choose to fashion the measure.
-
I'm not one for writing names on my wrist when I play. Actually, I internalise a lot. But my brother and I are so connected... everything I do is for him.
-
When you're writing something to direct, you just write exactly what you're going to do. You don't have to write it in a way for other people to understand or interpret.
-
One of the biggest challenges of writing for middle-grade or even young-adult readers is that I don't want to have too much violence in it - which really limits what you can do. It's important that they're not just bloodbaths or glorifying violence. I always try to show that a person who dies leaves a hole. There's grief in my books.
-
I had a certain career as an actor that I think was quite personal as well, and had a lot of integrity, but I wasn't writing my own things or directing my own movies.
-
You're writing about young, vibrant people; there are wins and losses. In other words, it's great drama.
-
There are many forms of writing that are common, but also very formulaic, such as annual reports or economic studies. In those areas, people would probably be relieved not to have to write those kinds of things because they are mundane and drudgery.
