Writing Quotes
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I always thought writing was the foundation and the basis for journalism in the same way being able to draw is the foundation for art.
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I grew up when one of America's greatest black playwrights, August Wilson, was writing about life in Pittsburgh, but I never saw myself in any of his straight-male plays. And then I see 'Angels,' which was so honest and painful, and it had this black drag queen in it, Belize, with a big heart. I finally had a character to relate to.
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In writing and speaking, three is more satisfying than any other number.
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The framework of the artist's ideas is clearly only that which he is forever seeking for universality, and must be far wider than the framework of the ideals of the patriot.
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Swing your partner, dosey-do, now clap your hands... uh-oh, that's all the square dance moves I know... I'll bluff the rest. Slap your partner in the face, Write bad checks all over the place, Flirt with strangers, annoy your spouse, Get a divorce and lose your house, ...uh... dosey-do.
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Before writing, I start with a series of questions, specific things I need to know before I can write the book... That list grows and changes as I do more and more research. But when I've answered the bulk of the questions, I begin to write.
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I've always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward.
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Now the writer, I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of ... reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us.
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When I start writing songs, and they come easily, I'm always very suspicious. That usually means they're reminding me of something I've already done before. When the songs become unsettling, and I feel anxious about what I'm doing, that usually means it's going to be more interesting later on when we actually record the stuff.
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I discovered ... that a novel has nothing to do with words in the first instance. Writing a novel is a cosmological matter, like the story told by Genesis (we all have to choose our role models, as Woody Allen puts it).
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I wasn't one of those kids that was like I'm going to be a country music singer or I'm going to be the next Pat Green and stuff. Hell, I didn't even think it was possible. I wrote to write. It wasn't even a thought in my head that I could do it professionally.
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I think there's a moral imperative when you're writing fictional heroes to give characters who somehow give us something to aspire to as opposed to dragging them down to our level.
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In writing, I'm totally anti-plans of any kind. All my attempts to plan and plot novels have come to grief, and in expensive ways.
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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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I want to write an essay called "Fear of Mexico," because I always feel like Mexico's this lover that never writes to me.
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I have this dream again and again: I find extra rooms in the place where I live. You could say it's a very New York dream, but I think it's about writing - the feeling that there is something behind a wall or a door.
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Something about writing needs a sort of distance not to be involved as a writer - just something that makes it easier to write. You have to make choices all the time - what to tell and what not to tell.
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The two hardest things about writing are starting and not stopping.
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I started playing the piano, pretty much on my own, when I was 5, and I started writing music when I was 7. In fact, I won a composition award. It was a crummy little piece, but I won with it.
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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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We're the only branch of government that explains itself in writing every time it makes a decision.
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I started writing when I was 21. I was going to become an historian. And then I realized there was more to the world than just the past. I didn't want to spend my life in the library.
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I know the movies that I've liked, and I know the experience that they've given me, so the goal is always to try to create a movie that I would like myself and that would knock me out, challenge me or intrigue me in some way. That's been my criteria for figuring out what I want to do, or also when I'm writing something or creating a scene.
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I do think that something of the effect I have on people is to put everything on an edge where they're both infatuated with a kind of charmingness happening in the person or in the writing, and also flatly terrified by a revelation or acceptance of revelation that's almost happening, never quite totally happening.
