Writing Quotes

• I feel I'm discovering something new, a different rhythm, and I guess these rhythms have a lot to do with walking, too, but it's a longer trajectory now. I'm traveling greater distances with each sentence. But I don't write about walking that much anymore.

  

  Paul Auster
  • Different
  • Writing
  • Distance

• Every serious man in dealing with really serious subjects carefully avoids writing. ... There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any writing of mine dealing with this subject.

  

  Plato
  • Writing
  • Exist
  • Dealing

• I can't do that wonderful thing that Tom Waits and Bob Dylan do - to do imagery. I'm not good at that. I just write from the heart.

  

  Rod Stewart
  • Heart
  • Waiting
  • Wonderful

• When you're writing, in theory, everybody is serving you. When you're directing, you're serving everybody - in the guise of acting like everybody's serving you. But you're really serving the materials. You're serving the actors. You're in charge, but it's not free.

  

  George C. Wolfe
  • Writing
  • Free

• If you are writing something in which you are really involved, you don't even need to think about it any longer. The situation itself demands your total commitment as an individual, just as in your political commitments.

  

  Simone de Beauvoir
  • Writing
  • Need
  • Commitments

• Good writing is good conversation, only more so.

  

  Ernest Hemingway
  • Writing
  • Conversation

• In every sense then, writing is thinking

  

  Charley Johnson
  • Thinking
  • Writing

• I look at writing as a medium of entertainment. You can get too precious about your stuff. It has to compete with everything else, like DVDs and CDs.

  

  Andy McNab
  • Writing
  • Entertainment
  • Precious

• When you're writing a song, you have to know two things. You have to know who you are, and you have to think about other people.

  

  Michael Masser
  • People
  • Things
  • About

• Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.

  

  W. H. Auden
  • Writing
  • Intelligent
  • Doe

• I'm drawn to New England because that's where my roots are, and I miss it. I come from many generations of New Englanders, and so, in my writing, I've been drawn back there to the landscape and the light and the type of personality that's revealed.

  

  Elizabeth Strout
  • Writing
  • Light
  • Personality

• The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.

  

  W. Somerset Maugham
  • Writing
  • Play
  • Cutting

• I was not especially enthusiastic about opera when I was young, and I thought I would never write one. I felt it was an art form of the past, with expensive singers exposing their high notes, and bad theater, and ridiculous stories which don't concern us. But then little by little I realized that it can be defined very differently, that on the contrary opera can be something profound and not superficial - a wonderful meeting point for all the other arts.

  

  Kaija Saariaho
  • Writing
  • Art
  • Past

• I'd always wanted to write something about the Korean War because of my heritage. My father lost his brother during the war, and I fictionalized that episode, which was told to me very briefly without much detail.

  

  Chang-Rae Lee
  • War
  • Father
  • Brother

• I'm writing songs to perform, to entertain. And when I'm really trying to get inspired, I go backwards, and I just rap.

  

  Mystikal
  • Inspired
  • Rap
  • Perform

• For example, when I was writing Leviathan, which was written both in New York and in Vermont - I think there were two summers in Vermont, in that house I wrote about in Winter Journal, that broken-down house... I was working in an out-building, a kind of shack, a tumble-down, broken-down mess of a place, and I had a green table. I just thought, "Well, is there a way to bring my life into the fiction I'm writing, will it make a difference?" And the fact is, it doesn't make any difference. It was a kind of experiment which couldn't fail.

  

  Paul Auster
  • Thinking
  • House
  • Summer

• I'll be writing essays long after I've stopped writing fiction. There is this unusually broad range in the non-fiction, but if you look at what I'm capable of as a novelist, I'm more limited.

  

  Geoff Dyer
  • Long
  • Writing

• We are all inspired by the incredible stories of handicapped people who write novels with their toes, cancer victims who run marathons for cancer research, bereaved parents who set up memorial funds for their lost children. How much easier is it for most of us to be small heroes simply by taking responsibility for our daily lives and transcending our ordinary obstacles?

  

  Danah Zohar
  • Children
  • Running
  • Hero

• 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".

  

  Neil Young Buffalo Springfield
  • Real
  • Guy
  • Song

• I like garage band for writing because you only have crayons and there are only five crayons in the box. Your choices are limited and I find that to be very good for me.

  

  Erin McKeown
  • Band
  • Choices
  • Boxes

• I don't really wanna think about themes. I wanna just think about the experience of the movie. I feel like, as soon as I reduce it to a theme, once I write that sentence, it won't be that great. I feel like there's more potential for it to mean something interesting if I'm not forcing it to mean something I've already decided.

  

  Wes Anderson
  • Thinking
  • Interesting
  • Mean

• Never use the word, 'very.' It is the weakest word in the English language; doesn't mean anything. If you feel the urge of 'very' coming on, just write the word, 'damn,' in the place of 'very.' The editor will strike out the word, 'damn,' and you will have a good sentence.

  

  William Allen White
  • Writing
  • Mean
  • Language

• The best writing really does come from the deepest, most private part of you.

  

  Michael Arndt
  • Writing
  • Private

• Writing is not the easiest way to make a living. Your work long hours, usually all by yourself. It is not a way to make money.

  

  Stephen Ambrose
  • Long
  • Way
  • Hours

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