Writing Quotes
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When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing - if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.
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Well, I wanted to be a philosopher, which is the idlest occupation in the world. I wanted to be involved in abstract thought, but because of various problems with the authorities I wasn't able to pull that one off. A lifetime of idleness in academia would have really suited me. So I was thrown out, as it were. Other than that, there seemed no possible idle occupations, so writing . . . although writing isn't exactly idleness. There's an enormous tension between indolence and languor.
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I do not feel like writing verses; but as I light my perfume burner with myrrh and jasmine incense, they suddenly burgeon from my heart, like flowers in a garden.
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There are always dimensions, and the way they get expressed is through the writing and the actors and the director you get to work with on that day. But there are always dimensions, outside of really basic stuff for very young people where it needs to be very clear.
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Writing a novel is an intense and lonely business, but you have the reward at the end of a very direct dialogue between you and the reader.
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I write longhand and I type and I rewrite on the typed pages.
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Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.
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I like to begin every screenplay with a burst of delusional self-confidence. It tends to fade pretty quickly, but for me, at least, there doesn't seem to be any other way to start writing a script.
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Writing is incidental to my primary objective, which is spinning a good yarn. I view myself as a storyteller more than a writer. The story - and hence the extensive research that goes into each one of my books - is much more important than the words that I use to narrate it.
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If I'm not writing songs about things I've actually been through, it ruins the idea of making music to me.
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I've always got a whole bunch of things in the works. That's sort of the nature of the business. Even when you're doing something you love doing, you have to be plotting and scheming and writing and preparing for what you're going to do when that's finished.Bunch
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As a writer, I always tend to take the liberty and the great artistic luxury of a composite form of writing.
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If a 25-year old can't read and write and he or she isn't gaining marketable skills, it doesn't matter if a Republican or a Democrat is in the White House. His or her future will be bleak.
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My favorite thing, maybe even more than going in and writing for myself because I've become bitter and jaded, is writing with an artist that has a perspective and that has a story to tell. It’s a really, really cool feeling and experience.
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Only think that I am now writing in a room full of Claudes... almost of the summit of my earthly ambitions.
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The thing that's very close in the process is writing and acting, not directing. Directing's very different.
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Write good content about stuff that you love. Readers will find you.
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I made a real specific decision when I came out of school and most artists were writing about home - if you were a woman, you were writing about being a woman - and I decided not to do that, write about what you know. That's not what I do. I went as far away from home as possible in terms of the development of my imagination.
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I write stories about conspiracies and paranoid characters while I am, in fact, a very skeptical person.
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All my books take a long time to research. I spend several months researching before I start writing, and in the middle of writing I often have to stop and look up stuff. At my local library, I am one of the best customers! The research takes several months.
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A writer is like a bag lady going through life with a sack and a pointed stick collecting stuff.
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When you are going through something that heavy, for me anyway, I couldn't imagine writing about anything else. I always tend to write about what's most prevalent in my mind.
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Something I always tell students is, when you're writing something, you want to write the first draft and you want it to come out easily in the beginning. If you're afraid to say what you really have to say, you stammer. When you're thinking of your listener, that's when you start stuttering and it's just because you're nervous that your listener is passing judgment.
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I've done well because I'm lucky and I'm willing to be collaborative with the one thing you don't want to be collaborative with: your writing.
