Writing Quotes
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Whenever we can make 25 words do the work of 50, we halve the area in which looseness and disorganization can flourish.
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Easy writing makes hard reading.
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The phrase 'teen hottie' literally makes me want to throw up. I'm a pop princess at heart. Pop is about distilling what you want to say and making it easy. And the way I write isn't about making things easy. It's a weird juxtaposition.
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To learn a piece on the piano - even a simple one - has proved every bit as agonizing as writing a chapter in a book, every bit as tedious and hopeless and halting. But this is not to say that the piano hasn't helped my writing. It has, just not in the ways I expected.
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Writing is solitary, so I love going out once in a while and meeting my readers. I'll often hang with them after a signing for some beers. They're invariably bright!
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One of my fears is not writing. I don't know how to do anything else.
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I don't want to be famous or recognizable. I don't want to be critiqued about the way that I look on the Internet... I've been writing pop songs for pop stars for a couple years and see what their lives are like, and that's just not something I want.
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If you're reading something from a Nobel Prize-winning physicist next to some guy in his underwear writing in his basement, or his mom's basement, on text, it looks like it's equally plausible.
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Whereas to write, all you need is paper and an idea, so I felt that writing might be my stepping stone.
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Money's really - you know, song writing, yes, there's money to be made and things like that. But really, when you talk about the real money, you talk about touring. No question.
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For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.
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I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry; I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression or to improve my English.
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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.
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The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.
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My question is "when did other people give up the idea of being a poet?" You know, when we are kids we make up things, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some people are still writing, the real question is why did the other people stop?
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You have to stop living in order to write.
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I think I'm writing for an intelligent stranger - you know, in my mind I can't remember who coined that phrase first. I don't want to write anything that makes me cringe, first of all. I cringe a lot - mostly when I hear popular music.
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More and more, you're seeing television shows that are better than 99% of the movies out there. I mean, you watch something like the last couple of seasons of 'The Sopranos,' which is some of the most sophisticated writing I've ever seen filmed and some of the best filmmaking I've ever seen - and it's a TV show.
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I think when you're in the early stages of writing a song, it's important to shut off the part of your brain that tries to edit or criticize. That function comes in handy later, but if you let it in too early, you can trip yourself up.
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I don't listen to anything when I'm writing. I need total quiet, which is astounding, given that I spent years working for a newspaper and having to write features surrounded by ringing phones and people shouting.
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I had never really written songs for anyone before. With [Broken] Social Scene, you're writing songs for others and your passing them around and exchanging things, but for a man who has the history that Andy Kim had, and has lived the life that he's had, you see such a youthful aspect of how he just wanted to create something again.
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I didn't want to write unless I could say, and think for myself. I looked to peers that I not only respected but those that supported that. I finished becoming who I am today by sticking up for myself as a voice, but that is in part thanks to the huge role the good guys I chose to work with played in my professional development. Some really terrific human beings who loved horror welcomed me with open arms.
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As an American writer, the literary tradition that I draw on the most is the Anglo-American one, and when you are writing in this tradition, the Orientalizing Western gaze is something you have to constantly push against as well as compromise with.
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Part of the joy of music is listening to lots of different kinds of music and learning from it. Specifically for me, I like writing songs that move me, and what moves me are beautiful songs on the piano or the guitar and really, really heavy music.
