Writing Quotes
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I do not begin my novel at the beginning, I do not reach chapter three before I reach chapter four, I do not go dutifully from one page to the next, in consecutive order; no, I pick out a bit here and a bit there, till I have filled all the gaps on paper. This is why I like writing my stories and novels on index cards, numbering them later when the whole set is complete. Every card is rewritten many times.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Ernest Hemingway talked about how writing is opening up a vein and bleeding onto the page. You prepared to do that?
Craig Lancaster
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My traducers propound my alleged malefaction as though I have spewed venom on women for half a century. But only a madman would go to the trouble of writing 31 books in order to affirm his hatred.
Philip Roth
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For me writing and filmmaking is a therapeutic process. It reflects themes that I'm going through at a time in my life.
Mark Webber
Pulp
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When you're writing historical fiction, you have to think a little farther into the situation: what the average social interactions were, what was acceptable behavior. What did people think was fun, what did they find unhappy, and why?
Alexander Chee
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I think that the joy of writing a novel is the self-exploratio n that emerges and also that wonderful feeling of playing God with the characters. When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. ... I think the most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.
Erica Jong
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There's a variety and depth to the song topics I get to write about in children's music and books: being able to write about things I wouldn't normally write about, like a disappointing pancake, or monsters or opposite day is really different than writing about heartbreak and relationships.
Lisa Loeb
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I'm talking to you and it's basically a direct communication, whereas if I'm writing a letter to you and you read the letter, there are like 12 extra deconstruction and reconstruction steps in the communication.
Kevin J. Anderson
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In 1975, I quit my tenure, and we moved from Ann Arbor to New Hampshire. It was daunting to pay for groceries and the mortgage by freelance writing - but it worked, and I loved doing it.
Donald Hall
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I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so I write for the people.
Maya Angelou
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Big picture, it's amazing to create characters and see them brought to life in the art. And to love that art. But I especially enjoy writing a character with heightened powers that aren't especially useful to him.
Cynthia Leitich Smith
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Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.
Anthony Hope
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For a while there, our writing got really edgy... I've always written about experiences, so when your life gets a bit crazy, you start to write songs that are a bit edgy.
Dolores O'Riordan
The Cranberries
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I was extremely shy. And I simply didn't know how to go about it. It seemed a lot easier to write than to make films. All I needed was a pencil and a piece of paper, whereas filmmaking was something I had no access to.
Paul Auster
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I am interested in politics but have stayed away from writing overtly political songs, or message songs, because I find it difficult to discuss politics intelligently in a 4-minute song. But I am finding there are ways to get bits and pieces of political thought across without preaching that the people have the power or we shall not be moved. Of course these sentiments have their place too - I'm not knocking Phil Ochs - but that's a different kind of music, songs to play at rallies, not to achieve a state of bliss.
Dean Wareham
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I write about two hours a day, and I write in fits and spurts - 45 minutes here, a half-hour there - and when I get stuck, which happens often, I take the dogs for a walk. But during the time when I'm not actually writing, I'm thinking.
Ellen Potter
