Writing Quotes
-
In my ideal writing environment, I'd be surrounded by nice visual art in a room with a window and high ceilings. The window would have to give me natural light.
-
I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about.
-
My writing is jagged and harsh, I want it to remain that way; I don't want it smoothed out.
-
There was no really good true war book during the entire four years of the war. The only true writing that came through during the war was in poetry. One reason for this is that poets are not arrested as quickly as prose writers.
-
It was good that Jim put this in writing, ... It puts Tony's mind at ease and certainly mine as well.
-
In the beginning, I want to say something about human greatness. Some time ago, I was reading texts of Kungtse. When I read these texts, I understood something about human greatness. What I understood from his writings was: What is greatest in human beings is what makes them equal to everybody else. Everything else that deviates higher or lower from what is common to all human beings makes us less. If we know this, we can develop a deep respect for every human being.
-
If something in your writing gives support to people in their lives, that's more than just entertainment-which is what we writers all struggle to do, to touch people.
-
It kills your writing if you try to manipulate it with crude politics.
-
I learned that comedy is born out of strong characters. I won't begin writing a character until I have a clear take on them.
-
Imagination is really dependent on memory and observation, these things that we think of as part of nonfiction writing, actually.
-
Much of the activity we think of as writing is, actually, getting ready to write.
-
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.
-
The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in the world, and an almost infinite capacity for forming complicated and unworkable rules.
-
When I was young, I was very technical about these things. I didn't like to admit to any intimate relation with what I was writing.
-
To me there's no creativity without boundaries. If you're gonna write a sonnet, it's 14 lines, so it's solving the problem within the container.
-
When I met Judd Apatow, he told me I should start writing screenplays. They'd be really bad at first, but the more I did it, the better I'd get.
-
Sean Penn, for his acting as well as his writing and directing. There are so many actors I respect, but his reach is so wide.
-
When I'm writing fiction I'm thinking, God, this is so hard - I have to make all this stuff up! I wish I were writing a nonfiction book where all the facts are laid out and I don't have to be so much at sea.
-
I like the challenge of writing music without being the coolest guy or band in the room.
-
I think ultimately it's just time management. You're just doing a lot more stuff. You're doing the same stuff, you're writing and you're producing, but it just comes with a lot of other things. A lot of long term thinking and plotting things out for the future, bringing elements together. I have a lot of support.
-
When you're writing, you think: How does intimacy happen in the work? You don't know who your reader is, woman, man, child, black person, Asian, who knows?
-
Don't write about what you know - write about what you're interested in. Don't write about yourself - you aren't as interesting as you think.
-
I loathe the trivialization of poetry that happens in creative writing classes. Teachers set exercises to stimulate subject matter: Write a poem about an imaginary landscape with real people in it. Write about a place your parents lived in before you were born. We have enough terrible poetry around without encouraging more of it.
-
In high school, I won a prize for an essay on tuberculosis. When I got through writing the essay, I was sure I had the disease.
