Writing Quotes
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It was only after five years in the army, when I was having to do a very boring job in a very boring place, that I thought: 'Why not try writing a novel?' partly out of youthful arrogance and partly because there had been a long line of writers in my mother's family.
Antony Beevor
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Always remember, there's no point trying to be faithful to the book because film and writing are just two completely different things. Any film stands on its own, apart from whether it's based on a novel.
William S. Burroughs
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To be the windowpane - this is basically a bastardization of what Orwell said about good writing - so you can get the conversation going and frame it the right way and make sure people aren't lost. And then you let the candidates illuminate the issues themselves.
John Dickerson
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Pantaenus was one of these and is said to have gone to India. It is reported that among persons there who knew of Christ, he found the Gospel according to Matthew, which had anticipated his own arrival. For Bartholomew, one of the apostles, had preached to them, and left with them the writing of Matthew in the Hebrew language, which they had preserved till that time. After many good deeds, Pantaenus finally became the head of the school at Alexandria, and expounded the treasures of divine doctrine both orally and in writing.
Elton Welsby
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Do not slip into writing for the mind and the mind alone. In other words, do not play merely upon our ability to reason. And do not focus only on visuals. Write for the whole person.
N.D. Wilson
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There came this point where I sat down with all my notebooks and I had to start to write, when I thought: this whole notion of writing for the person who understands nothing, the average reader... He has to die! I can't have him in my head. And so the person I started writing for was the homicide detective.
David Simon
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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?
William Stafford
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The thing that's very close in the process is writing and acting, not directing. Directing's very different.
Sean Penn
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I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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I find most 'rules' about how to write a 'good story' confining, and I enjoy writing stories that don't look like stories at all on the surface.
Ken Liu
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If you show up to work five days in a row, nobody's going to pat you on the back - everyone does that. Well, do that with your writing. Just show up. Be there for it. When you get an idea, write it down somewhere and then be a steward of that idea.
John Darnielle
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I never thought about doing a sequel when I was actually writing 'The Magicians.' I only ever considered it a standalone.
Lev Grossman
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Whatever may be our natural talents, the art of writing is not acquired all at once.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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All through my writing life I've had this impulse to write autobiographical works.
Paul Auster
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I got away from comedy because it wasn't being done in the way that I loved and the way that I could do it. It made me sad because I felt like it wasn't appreciated and no one was writing it so, 'I'll abandon it.
Sandra Bullock
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When I'm working, I'm pretty busy with that, but when I'm not, yeah, I like to make music. I sing in jazz bars and stuff, and then I mainly paint every day. It's kind of like a different side of my mind I like to use, and it keeps the other one fresh, and yeah, writing, I've been writing with some friends.
Alia Shawkat
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Writing original songs is much, much harder (I think) because you only have yourself to conjure up EVERY single moment a listener is going to hear. It's a craft that goes directly from your brain to their ears. You can never be sure that what you're writing is gonna be good enough to keep a listener engaged and truly experience something. It's a shot in the dark.
Alex Goot
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When you write about animals, of course, you are really writing about the people who love and live with them. Animals mirror and reveal us. Dogs in particular are often reflections of us, and what we need them to be.
Jon Katz
