Writing Quotes
-
I like to erase lines between categories. Why separate cookbook writing from writing, healthy from good tasting? I want to be open to possibilities.
-
Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. It helps, if you have a plan and a course laid out.
-
I started writing because I got so frustrated that there weren't enough plays that had roles for young black women in them.
-
There would be times when I got so much work that I didn't have time to write. School interfered with writing more than writing with school.
-
One problem with writing on the computer, as I do, is that the page is never really 'blank." It is backed by all this energy or potential energy...one can always check the New York Times, or look at real estate, or investigate some intriguing new person in one's life. The span and space for writing feels like a tunnel under these massive mountains of information.
-
So I have to create the whole thing afresh for myself each time. Probably all writers now are in the same boat. It is the penalty we pay for breaking with tradition, and the solitude makes the writing more exciting though the being read less so. One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with ones words.
-
When I picked up the guitar for the first time, it opened up a whole new world for me. I became obsessed with writing and playing.
-
Once we reject lyricism, to blacken a page becomes an ordeal: what’s the use of writing in order to say exactly what we had to say?
-
Music was something I was encouraged to do, which I appeared to be quite good at, but it was never a passion. Writing was always my first love.
-
Trying every day to tell the truth is hard. There are harder things, of course - arguably, living with lies and meaninglessness, living in despair is harder, but it's hardship disguised as luxury and easier perhaps to grow accustomed to, since truth is usually the enemy of custom. There are harder things than writing, being President Obama, for instance, and having to deal with House Republicans, or trying to fix the leak at the Fukushima reactor, these are harder, but writing is hard.
-
Nashville has become sort of this go-to writing city for every genre.
-
I'm not sure if a writer should talk about themes. Themes arrive out of the deeper structure and concerns, but to me, the main thing is getting it down right, writing about specific characters in specific predicaments, and finding a way to be true to the story itself, not only in the first burst of draft but in the revision, too.
-
Writing is hard - writing is the hardest.
-
I think you find stories with fresh perspectives, and there can be a danger in the opposite way when you start getting too cynical and things just don't start seeming like stories, and things don't seem exciting anymore. It's like, 'Yep, this is my fourth caucus, and I know everybody and know everything and I am writing just to impress my friends.'
-
Graham Greene at 82 years old was still writing, and I don't think anyone can deny the force, the expertise, and the unique quality of his writing, if you take his complete oeuvre.
-
The core of my career is my teaching and my writing.
-
I like the process of pencil and paper as opposed to a machine. I think the writing is better when it's done in handwriting.
-
You can make bad writing 'OK,' but... you really need to start with a good script and with characters that are three-dimensional and with great dialogue. It's a difficult lesson to learn because good writing is hard to come by, but it's definitely worth chasing.
-
Well, language seems to be something that obsesses me. I'm always writing about it.
-
I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.
-
Writing requires a great deal of skill, just like painting does. People don't want to learn those skills.
-
I love long sentences. My big heroes of fiction writing are Henry James and Proust - people who recognise that life doesn't consist of declarative statements, but rather modifications, qualifications and feelings.
-
Find what gave you emotion; what the action was that gave you excitement. Then write it down making it clear so that the reader can see it too. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.
-
It's really weird because my house is very ornate, but my writing lair is very, very blank. It's white, the furniture is white. It gives me nothing to look at, so I just have to concentrate!
