Writing Quotes
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That really was a lot of the appeal of 'Rumours.' The music was wonderful, but the music was also authentic because it was two couples breaking up and writing dialogue to each other. It was also appealing because we were rising to the occasion to follow our destiny.
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I've had a lot of writers, in particular, who said they got into writing because of the 'Van Dyke Show.' They said it looked like fun.
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The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
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I'm always writing from some difficult place and seeing how the character survives... or doesn't.
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It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.
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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.
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My youngest son becomes an award-winning nature photographer, and I cannot resist writing poems to his pictures. My daughter loves to cook, though I do not. Yet together, we write a cookbook with fairy tales. And now a second.
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The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment.
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The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form.
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I love writing, but I have that E. E. Cummings idea that as long as you stay inside the rules of your own world, it doesn't matter what it is.
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Every separate sector of artistic creation has its own basic rules . . . data which govern it. They are contained in the textbooks on these subjects. A professional knows the rules of the game as a matter of course so that he can achieve, in the upper strata above that, a high quality of art.
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When you're writing a team book where every character already has his or her own series, you don't have dominion over them as individuals - but what you can exploit is their relationships with one another.
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There's one massive problem with coming from writing novels into screenplays that I've discovered over the years, which is that you've got too much facility on the page.
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Even though I was trained in play writing and screenwriting, when I sat down to write a comic book for the first time, Alan Moore was first and foremost in my mind.
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I don't like writing straight-up thrillers. I like writing about families hurled into crisis and danger - soccer moms and regular dads and husbands who might have to rescue their daughters or who are, say, hedge fund managers and have one foot on the sidelines watching their kids and the other in nefarious cover-ups and conspiracies.
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Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.
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Sometimes a book isn't a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Sometimes it's the only story you know how to tell.
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The reason why I love people, and writing about them, is because they don't always respond with hate and anger. If they did I wouldn't have a story to tell. Who wants to know about someone who was brutalised and became brutal? I'm interested in the exceptions.
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I don't make that hard and fast distinction between political and nonpolitical writing. I write about what bothers me.
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When I started writing a business column 15 years ago, I knew I'd found the perfect job for myself. As a columnist I could pick my own topic, do my own analysis, say what I wanted to say and attribute it to myself. Best of all, I could write in my own voice.
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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.
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It did not prepare me for writing or 'Power of Attorney.' However, what it did is that it forced me out of the DA's office. I stopped getting that county check.
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Being on 'Nashville' and working with some incredible people like T-Bone Burnett and Buddy Miller - so many wonderful, incredible musicians that I've been blessed to play with and observe - that has continued to shape the process of arranging music, writing music.
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To be successful in writing, use short sentences.
