Writing Quotes
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The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.
W. Somerset Maugham
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I think that sense of unreality inspired me to write the story within the book that [August] Brill tells himself, one of the stories he tells himself.
Paul Auster
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I find myself speaking through the other characters, putting ideas in their voices and heads. Writing almost becomes a splitting of myself into multiple personalities. But I don't write to make an argument on behalf of any of the characters, or to prove anything about a character. I think that's important that I be serving the story first and not my own point of view.
Danzy Senna
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I have not much faith in women in fiction.... Women are so horribly subjective and they have such scorn for the healthy commonplace. When a woman writes a story of adventure, a stout sea tale, a manly battle yarn, anything without wine, women, and love, then I will begin to hope for something great from them, not before.
Willa Cather
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I started writing stories when I was 9 or 10. I wrote my first screenplay-type document when I was 14.
Cary Fukunaga
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You're looking for something, I don't know what I'm looking for, but I'm looking. Writing is a lot about that. When you write a poem. When you write a novel.
Alejandro Zambra
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I've often heard academics disparage non-academic writing in terms that suggest it could be a negative in the tenure process, irrespective of the quality of academic work under review.
Daniel Drezner
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Anybody who can write home for money can write for magazines.
Wilson Mizner
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I can sit and dissect for hours, and then write 50 songs about. I always find that inspiring.
Rachael Yamagata
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I didn't want the lyrics to be about specific things in my life, I wanted them to be about generalised experiences I'd had. So when I'm writing about relationships or somebody leaving you or something, a lot of lyrics are partly about failed relationships I'd had, but they were also about my Dad, and being abandoned as a kid.
Zachary Cole Smith
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I LOVE Taylor Swift's 1989. I think it's really cool at the moment that the production on her record is just as strong as the writing. I like the fact that the early nineties sound seems to have come back around.
Kelly Clarkson
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There were times when depression, anxiety, whatever, would keep me from writing. I still get depressed and anxious, but I just don't let it stop me. I've just learned to move it to one side if I want to work.
David St. John
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I honestly don't have many creative outlets. I'm not crafty - although motherhood has forced me to try to be - and I can only draw trees, beaches, and clouds. I'm a so-so cook except for deviled eggs. Writing has always been the one thing I feel that I am pretty good at doing. But it's enough, thank goodness.
Sarah Dessen
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[Writing] is edit, edit, edit. It's almost like getting a boat ready to go to sea. You've still got a countless number of things left to fix, but you've just got to go, "O.K., everybody get on the boat. We're going, ready or not."
Jimmy Buffett
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Plot, or evolution, is life responding to environment; and not only is this response always in terms of conflict, but the really great struggle, the epic struggle of creation, is the inner fight of the individual whereby the soul builds up character.
William Wallace Cook
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Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.
Ursula K. Le Guin