Writing Quotes
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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.
David Means
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A writer's life is so hazardous that anything he does is bad for him. Anything that happens to him is bad: failure's bad, success is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen... Except the act of writing.
E. L. Doctorow
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I am writing to make sure that kids don't lose very important traits like curiosity that can drive social change because oftentimes I think parents emphasise more on doing well in school, which is important, but perhaps that sometimes comes at the cost of a child's natural curiosity.
Adora Svitak
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I can't help slightly falling in love with every character I write about. And I quite like writing about people who are vilified.
Peter Morgan
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I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.
Alexander Payne
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I never really thought of myself as a TV critic. I was presenting TV before I was writing about it.
Charlie Brooker
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I've always said my audience is just me. It's somebody out there who's exactly like me and just isn't writing Daring Fireball.
John Gruber
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Music was my friend when I was a teenager, and I would inhabit and take comfort in lyrics. That's how I want to write.
Yannis Philippakis
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I've been in so many writing workshops where someone hands in a story, and when the other writers in the workshop are giving feedback, they say, 'This is unbelievable.' And the writer says, 'Well, actually, the events are based in real life. This actually happened.'
Jesmyn Ward
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When I started out, nobody gave me scripts, so I had to write...
Ang Lee
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Progress was a labyrinth ... people plunging blindly in and then rushing wildly back, shouting that they had found it ... the invisible king-the élan vital-the principle of evolution ... writing a book, starting a war, founding a school.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
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After a couple of years in a professional setting, you'll get used to dressing presentably, preparing for meetings, speaking appropriately, showing up on time, writing professional correspondence, etc.
Andrew Yan
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I never had any frustration about writing uncredited. I always felt that the satisfaction of doing it was in the doing of it, really, and getting recognised by the small number of people that know what you did.
Tom Stoppard
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The bottom line is I'm writing to save the dead. I'm writing to save the people I have lost, some of whose bodies are still walking around.
Dorothy Allison
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I never feel more myself than when I'm writing; I never enjoy any day more than a good writing day.
Anthony Minghella
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With 'Pariah,' at the time, I had just come out. I had a coming out experience, and I was writing about it, transposing my experience as an adult: What would it have been like if I had been a teenager in Brooklyn? The funny thing was people thought I was from Brooklyn. I had to be like, 'No, I'm from Nashville.'
Dee Rees
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You could do a 'Les Mis'-type musical about Hamilton, but it would have to be 12 hours long, because the amount of words on the bars when you're writing a typical song - that's maybe got 10 words per line.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
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From very early on, I've realized that and I have a mission statement with my songs to entertain, to encourage and to challenge the Body of Christ. That's always kind of the focus of the songs that I write for myself.
Jonny Diaz
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Writing is a crummy profession, but a good hobby.
Paavo Haavikko
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Persecution, then, gives rise to a peculiar technique of writing, and therewith to a peculiar type of literature, in which the truth about all crucial things is presented exclusively between the lines. That literature is addressed, not to all readers, but to trustworthy and intelligent readers only.
Leo Strauss
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During my past career as a journalist, I relished writing obits and equally dreaded phoning relatives for the necessary facts. But to my surprise and great relief, they often wanted to talk - they wanted their recently deceased loved ones recorded in print.
Tom Rachman
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In writing, you discover interior sonorities in words. Dipthongs sound differently beneath the pen. One hears them with their sounds divorced.
Gaston Bachelard
