Writing Quotes
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Rex Stout's narrative and dialogue could not be improved, and he passes the supreme test of being rereadable. I don't know how many times I have reread the Wolfe stories, but plenty. I know exactly what is coming and how it is all going to end, but it doesn't matter. That's writing.
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It seems strange that everyone I'm writing about was very famous.... Didn't I ever find anyone interesting who was not famous? Actually, no, I didn't.
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Because music is a language unto itself, when I'm writing, I need silence. I need to hear the music and the rhythms of the words inside my thoughts.
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And when we are writing the life of a woman, we may, it is agreed, waive our demand for action, and substitute love instead. Love, the poet has said, is a woman's whole existence.
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Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.
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Well, I do write on political and social issues and the idea that one shouldn't - or the idea that we should censor ourselves - doesn't really work for me because it would be doing the government's job for them. And I'm not interested in doing that. I think what we need very much in Pakistan is to be able to discuss the corruption and the violence that really colours most of our life here.
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Our everyday language has become encumbered, Germanic, artificial, bureaucratic, inorganic. It may not be exaggerated to say that by now American writers face but two alternatives: write English, or write gobbledygook.
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The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.
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There are no rules in writing. There are useful principles. Throw them away when they're not useful. But always know what you're throwing away.
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I've been writing, but I haven't been writing. In my mind I've been saying I want to write, but I haven't actually physically picked up a pencil and started writing.
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I love writing stand-up so much and tinkering and looking for ideas.
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I do outlines when I'm writing with someone, but they also need to have a certain amount of freedom.
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I feel much more comfortable in politics than I did in book writing. Book writing is so hard. Politics felt easy compared to that.
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Wearing down seven number two pencils is a good day's work.
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I think that's the great thing for us - we're a band full of songwriters, and we're capable of writing all kinds of songs.
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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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Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people.
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Basically I can't sleep without every single song I'm writing repeating endlessly, but I'm loving it again. Embracing the torture, as I'm assaulted by my own thoughts. Like a locust giving birth to earworms. Eeeeew!
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I can't stand it when people say, "If you're writing a novel, you should read this and that." Because it's like giving someone another person's prescription. How do you know that's what they need?
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A lot of folks just get it in their head that, for instance, like writing memoirs is just easy. You just write down what happened. It doesn't quite work that way.
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The music I really like to get off on is the old rhythm 'n' blues and rock 'n' roll stuff... that's what I really dig. And I also dig to sing ballads as well. And I also dig writing my own songs. I was just trying to find a way of integrating the whole thing, taking a look at the total picture.
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I had all these raw, gritty rock records that really inspired me sonically, and so I think everything I listen to when I started writing my own songs kind of came out naturally, and it created this new sound.
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The way you get your script to the right people is that you put it in an envelope. It's easy. The difficult bit is writing something that is so good people will take a punt on a brand new writer.
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I don't make that hard and fast distinction between political and nonpolitical writing. I write about what bothers me.
