Writing Quotes
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The marvellous thing about writing, whether it be fiction or journalism, is that it is simultaneously the most intimate and the most anonymous of meetings between people. It is profoundly intimate in reaching into the psyche of another, at the same time as being devoid of social characteristics, cultural characteristics, economic characteristics.
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I'm convinced that we can write and live our own scripts more than most people will acknowledge. I also know the price that must be paid. It's a real struggle to do it. It requires visualization and affirmation. It involves living a life of integrity, starting with making and keeping promises, until the whole human personality the senses, the thinking, the feeling, and the intuition are ultimately integrated and harmonized.
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My thumbprint is on every single thing that happens with Hellboy. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do professionally, letting someone else draw the main Hellboy comic. He's so much mine. But I still have no intention of ever handing over the writing of the main Hellboy comic to someone else. That character is my baby.
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And I tend to listen to NPR when I'm not writing.
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When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear.
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I am not at all in a humour for writing; I must write on till I am.
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I was reading a lot of Jacques Derrida at the time, writing 'Beth.' He actually talked about zombies.
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In fact, quite a lot of what I do has to do with sound texture, and, you can't notate that. You can't notate the sound of "St. Elmo's Fire." There's no way of writing that down. That's because musical notation arose at a time when sound textures were limited. If you said violins and woodwind that defined the sound texture; if I say synthesizer and guitar it means nothing - you're talking about 28,000 variables.
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I don't wait for inspiration. I get up and write every day.
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As long as a man had the courage to reject what society told him to do, he could live life on his own terms. To what end? To be free. But free to what end? To read books, to write books, to think.
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I wanted to write about the third world and had the opportunity to go live in the trenches, so to speak.
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Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similes (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).
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I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.
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There's a sureness to good writing even when what's being written about doesn't make all that much sense. It's the sureness of the so-called seat of an accomplished horseback rider or a sailor coming about in a strong wind. The words have both muscle and grace, familiarity and surprise.
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I never got any training in how to write novels as an English major at Oberlin, but I got some great training for writing novels from anthropology and from Margaret Mead.
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I called the guys from Promise of the Real, whom I've been playing with, and they were all on the road. Right after I hung up the phone, I wrote another song and started writing another, and I'm going, "Hey, I can't wait. I should be doing this now!" My experience tells me that when it's there, it's there, and you can't make it wait. So I got Jimmy Keltner and Paul Bushnell, two good guys, and went in and did this record "Peace Trail".
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You have to be very clear with yourself about how you're going to spend your time. When a child is at school or napping, you need to realize that this is your writing time and you don't spend it surfing the Internet or reading.
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When you're an artist, your personal life and your professional life kind of blend together. I'm writing from home so I don't have an office or anything. I don't know where to draw the line between "Okay, let's stop now and watch American Idol."
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There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.
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I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.
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I write with as much objectivity as I can.
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In creative writing, I teach that characters arise out of our need for them.
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I'm usually writing or producing for other people. I'm like Burger King most of the time; I let people have it their way like "You want it like this? I'll give it to you like this."
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What I do is give Ennio Morricone suggestions and describe to him my characters, and then, quite often, he'll possibly write five themes for one character. And five themes for another. And then I'll take one piece of one of them and put it with a piece of another one for that character or take another theme from another character and move it into this character.... And when I have my characters finally dressed, then he composes.
