Writing Quotes
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If you write a bunch of different characters with a bunch of different opinions, you end up with these long scenes of everyone standing around talking.
Michael Arndt
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The freedom to share one's insights and judgments verbally or in writing is, just like the freedom to think, a holy and inalienable right of humanity that, as a universal human right, is above all the rights of princes.
Karl Friedrich Bahrdt
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I am not a politics wonk. I like the idea of my writing reflecting more about who I am or other people.
Peter Morgan
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I've been writing most of my life; it's just something I do.
Alejandro Zambra
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I work every day - or at least I force myself into office or room. I may get nothing done, but you don't earn bonuses without putting in time. Nothing may come for three months, but you don't earn the fourth without it.
Mordecai Richler
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People in Israel would write in a high register, they wouldn't write colloquial speech. I do a special take on colloquial speech. When I started writing, I thought [the language] was telling the story of this country: old people in a young nation, very religious, very conservative, very tight-assed, but also very anarchistic, very open-minded. It's all in the language, and that's one thing that doesn't translate.
Etgar Keret
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The thing that I hate is that Nicholas Kristof style of writing where it's like, "I saw the poor, they made me so sad. What can I do about sadness? I am so brave." It's just like, shut up, man, shut up.
Molly Crabapple
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I like to write things to be personal, so I just put what I'm thinking about at the time.
Sofia Coppola
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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
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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
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I'd love to write full time. But it's not something that is due to me because I'm a writer. Times are very hard for doing the thing you love, but the payoff for not having much money is that you love your job. A balance would be good. But yes, given infinite funds, or a guaranteed regular income of some kind, I'd happily shut myself away and write stories for the rest of what I've got in me.
Evie Wyld
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When you write, you're supposed to go stand somewhere else for a while, see things from a perspective that's not in line with your own reflexive truths.
Catherine Brady
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Writing is thinking on paper.
William Zinsser
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Writing a book is like running a marathon. You need to be fit to do it, mentally and, as far as possible, physically.
Catherine Mayer
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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
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The more interesting the 9-to-5 work is, the more it takes away from my real work, which is writing.
Judith Rossner
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Writing is not a special language that belongs to a few sensitive souls who have a 'gift for words'. Writing is the logical arrangement of thought. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly---about any subject at all.
William Zinsser
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Many novice writers, students in particular, think that writing is little more than copying down their self-talk, the palaver of the voices they hear in their heads. Of course, self-talk is thinking, and writing begins with thinking.
Richard Rhodes
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Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.
William Zinsser
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Since the age of 11, I have loved writing poems and fragments from my life.
Niki de Saint Phalle
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My life wasn't always smooth sailing. Two members of my family were diagnosed with cancer, so I spent a lot of time in hospitals and giving home care. Several close friends died. I fell in love with the wrong person. And I was working all the time but still sliding into debt. My life wasn't anything like I thought it would be. And then I got in a bad car accident. I walked away, but it was like a splash of cold water. The next day, I started writing Twelve Lives. Sometimes, when you're backed into a corner and have nothing to lose, it's a great place to write from.
Hannah Tinti
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No writing is good enough until you, as an author, make a small contribution, the size of a drop, into the ocean of the world’s literature.
Nuruddin Farah
