Writing Quotes
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When you're writing a story or an actor playing a role, you should never think of your characters as heroes or villains. You have to think of them as people first.
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To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.
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It's a weird job because making music or writing a song is a personal thing... and it kind of has to be. You can always tell when people are faking.
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We have always learned about life by dramatising our questions.
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Even though language has its richness the relationship between language and the writer is always like a stone and you have to make the stone human.
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Writing has... been to me like a bath from which I have risen feeling cleaner, healthier, and freer.
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The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.
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The first Chapter Law is, "Don't spend much time on it. You're going to have to rewrite it."
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I did some writing and bought a book, and have been working on that as a film to act and direct in.
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Any topical subject, if it's Hollywood, will be a couple of years later because you've got to write it, produce it and distribute it, so automatically you're never going to be right on the cutting edge of stories.
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You look at shows on cable, and there's a lot of smart writing out there.
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One of my biggest goals, especially with writing YA novels, is just to have people enjoy reading.
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I was always the observer, trying to understand what was going on. I was always the new kid. Writing became my safe place.
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I just love to play rock and roll. I love to write songs all the time about what's up on these streets. I write songs about people getting killed; I write songs about people getting beaten up; I write songsabout people getting taken to jail by the police; and I also write songs about love and happiness.
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When you write you have to reside in the unknown for as long as possible.
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When you're writing you're constantly fighting demons to sit down and do what you do. If you listen to the voices outside your head, in addition to the ones inside your head, you'll never get anything done. There's enough inner strife.
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I think all writers are mainly writing for themselves because I believe that most writers are writing based on a need to write. But at the same time, I feel that writers are, of course, writing for their readers, too.
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It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
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My kids don't really like when I sing for some reason...but they like when I play guitar. So I started writing songs just playing guitar for them.
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Don't ever let anyone else write your story for you.
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I sometimes get up at night when I can't sleep and walk down into my library and open one of my books and read a paragraph and say, 'My God, did I write that?
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My creative process involves reading books and magazines, writing outside, and moving around a lot. I like to pace around when I'm writing songs.
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Why cast yourself over a cliff, deciding in your writings about things of which you are ignorant? Why do you not keep to what you have received from the Fathers and Doctors of the Church? You introduce novelties!
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I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'
