Writing Quotes
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When I devoted myself to poetry - and poetry is a very serious medium - I don't think the people that knew me as an individual with that tongue-in-cheek kind of humor...well, it didn't always lend itself to my poetry. When you're writing poetry, it's like working with gold, you can't waste anything. You have to be very economical with each word you're going to select. But when you're writing fiction, you can just go on and on; you can be more playful. My editor's main task is to cut back, not ask for more.
Ana Castillo
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I think the key to writing the truth of our existences, so much of this is being incubated online, is examining the conflicts and the messiness, our sometimes dividedness, dealing with gender and other hierarchies, and also our identities outside of them, deeply personal and yet somehow critical and circumspect.
Kate Zambreno
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I loved writing when I was a kid and thought about being a writer then. But I didn't have the confidence or belief that I could earn a living that way, so I never took myself seriously.
Marcia Clark
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I’ll never retire as long as I live—that’s like retiring from life! I’ll never stop writing, teaching, lecturing. If you’re in good health, living is exciting on its own.
Bel Kaufman
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The only thing better than good English writing is - I can't think of anything. You just don't pour it pureed over your potatoes. You savor it as if it were a find chardonnay. What on Earth does it matter if you stop and repeat a phrase, roll it around on your tongue, dart a few lines ahead and then suddenly come back and reread it? If the phrase is good enough, you are supposed to stop and rejoice in it.
William Murchison
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The only way to get change is not through the courts or - heaven forbid - the politicians, but through a change of human consciousness and through a change of heart. Only through the arts - music, poetry, dance, painting, writing - "can we really reach each other.
Leslie Marmon Silko
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I work even when I am on vacation. You know that line by Stéphane Mallarmé, "All earthly existence must ultimately be contained in a book"? I am the kind of person who finds life interesting only if it is translated into writing, if it is parsed into words.
Bernard-Henri Levy
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I can write two scripts concurrently, but I usually prefer to do one at a time. However, I also usually have 5 or 6 story ideas that are percolating in my head at any one time, so it can get a little crowded in there.
Michael Arndt
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Writing about identity can be like maneuvering through a minefield, even when considering contemporary figures who have discussed the subject themselves.
William J. Mann
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I am telling you what I know—words have music and if you are a musician you will write to hear them.
E. L. Doctorow
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When I started writing I was a great rationalist and believed I was absolutely in control. But the older one gets, the more confused, and for an artist I think that is quite a good thing: you allow in more of your instinctual self; your dreams, fantasies and memories. It's richer, in a way.
John Banville
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Think 'Game of Thrones.' In the old days, this sort of show might be considered bad writing. It doesn't really seem to be moving toward a crisis or climax, it has no true protagonist, and it's structured less like a TV show or a movie than a soap opera.
Douglas Rushkoff
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Writing for somebody else is really fun 'cause I consider myself a songwriter first and foremost.
Kesha
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When we moved to Australia in 2008, I decided to try to live off the writing.
Adrian McKinty
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I think my cheerfulness keeps my writing from sinking into the depths of melancholy, while the darker side keeps in check any literary silliness I might be inclined toward.
David Starkey
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If only she could put them together, she felt, write them out in some sentence, then she would have got at the truth of things.
Virginia Woolf
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Unlike a typical professional, I can't quit my job to become a full-time author; I don't have that luxury. For me, writing is therapy; if I choose to write full-time, it might start feeling like work.
Ashwin Sanghi
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I'm halfway through a novel set in two time frames - Austin in the 1960's and Alpine Texas in present day. It started out to be a small, lighthearted, humorous book about family relationships; I was tired of writing war stories and tragedies.
Elizabeth Crook