Writing Quotes
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I put the copy of 'A Christmas Carol' that my grandfather had first read to me 60 years ago on my desk, and I began to write. The result, for better or for worse, is the 'Christmas Spirits.' I plan to read it to my grandson.
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I realized very early that I was never going to make by living by writing string quartets. But I wanted to write music and I didn't want to have to do anything else.
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Every time I finish a song... most of the time it's in my own head, like this sounds too much like a Townes Van Zandt song, or whoever. I realize there are so many melodies and chord progressions in pop and rock music that are so similar that you can kind of trace it back to other things. Most of the time it's just in your head.
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Don't write naughty words on the wall if you can't spell!
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Everything I know, I write about. My only research is what I did.
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I've always loved opera; it never occurred to me that I would write a proper libretto. One of my closest friends is a composer, Paul Moravec, and a few years ago, Paul and I were at lunch, and I said to him, "you really have to write an opera." So, he says very casually to me, "I'll do it if you write the libretto." Well, little did I know that the within a couple of years we would end up getting a commission from the Santa Fe Opera to write an opera together, "The Letter," which turned out to be the most successful commissioned opera in the history of the Santa Fe Opera.
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Writing has always helped me to make sense of difficult things.
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If I'm not at my study by 10:00, 10:30, forget it, I can't write a word.
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I write not for your farthing, but to try. How I your farthing writers, may outvie.
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I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let's face it, writing is hell.
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I emphasize the dual mission of the Life Cube Project: involving as many members of the community as possible; and encouraging people to write down their goals, ambitions and wishes. I hope that the concept has an impact on these students' lives - that would be my dream.
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The best part of writing is thinking about the story. And then everything else takes a lot of discipline.
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Adam Ezra writes with the heart of a troubadour and sings like a rock star. He is truely a fresh voice in singer/songwriter scene.
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When Walt Whitman writes in seeming defiance of tradition, he needs tradition for his protection, for the butcher and the baker and the candlestick-maker grow merry over him when they meet his work by chance.
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With respect to those points, on which the declaration of Scripture is positive and decisive, as, for instance, in asserting the low antiquity of the human race; the evidence of all facts that have yet been established in Geology coincides with the records of Sacred History and Profane Tradition to confirm the conclusion that the existence of mankind can on no account be supposed to have taken its beginning before that time which is assigned to it in the Mosaic writings.
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I don't like things to be overcharged, because otherwise everyone starts getting nervous. I try to be very well organized. When I write the script, everything is already in there, like the decoupage.
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Adam Ezra writes with the heart of a troubadour and sings like a rock star. He is truely a fresh voice in singer/songwriter scene.
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I sold 'Hattie Big Sky' without an agent but quickly realized a writing career required an agent.
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So many writers come to class with one question dominant in their mind, 'How do I make a living from this?' It's a fair enough question and one I always try to answer well- but it saddens me that it so often overshadows the more relevant questions of 'why am I writing' and 'what am I saying' and 'how do I keep it honest.
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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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The muse whispers to you when she chooses, and you can't tell her to come back later, because you quickly learn in this business that she might not come back at all.
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If you're going to write about the river, you've got to get in.
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The things worth writing about, and the things worth reading about, are the things that feel almost beyond description at the start and are, because of that, frightening.
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I'm very secretive. I'll write a whole novel and revise it, which might take me two years or more, and the people I know best don't know what I'm writing about.
