Writing Quotes
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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.
Terry Teachout
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When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.
Dodie Smith
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Solitude. It is way underrated in our world of writing. We stay busy. We act busy. We thrive on busy. The truth is there is a lot of beauty that lives in the solitude. Quiet is not the enemy. Quiet is necessary for brains to not self-destruct.
Bonnie Baker
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Bernard Williams has been a distinctive presence on the intellectual scene for more than three decades. . . . His writings do not offer the dubious exhilaration of grand philosophical theory, in which messy reality is tamed and caged, but the thrill of seeing pretension punctured by a kind of high-voltage common sense (backed up by impressive erudition). . . . There is no one in philosophy quite like him.
Colin McGinn
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Editing is work, and it's hard to do while working on one's own writing.
Allison Joseph
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Being in a room with other people's energy yields such a different result. I love writing by myself still, but there's something amazing about sharing that experience with someone else.
Ingrid Michaelson
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I think that very often younger writers don't appreciate how much hard work is involved in writing. The part of writing that's magic is the thinnest rind on the world of creation. Most of a writer's life is just work. It happens to be a kind of work that the writer finds fulfilling in the same way that a watchmaker can happily spend countless hours fiddling over the tiny cogs and bits of wire. ... I think the people who end up being writers are people who don't get bored doing that kind of tight focus in small areas.
Diane Ackerman
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Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's a pleasure.
Colm Toibin
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I think I'm always writing, and I'm always working, and I'm always trying to be creative. It's just something that I do all the time. I watch TV, and I'll play guitar.
John 5
LOSER
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I was planning on writing a detailed review of several books on web security tonight, but the Obama collapse has superseded my best-laid plans. Here’s another open thread for this important topic, as America wrestles with the issue of whether it would be a good idea to elect a President with a 20-year history of associating with people who hate America.
Charles Foster Johnson
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Being a reporter is one of the noblest things you can do in life. Letting the people know. It's really a holy cause. Time after time after time, in the middle of corruption and disgrace and bad politics, I've seen people come through and do for people. I write about someone in trouble and someone else rallies to help them. Through reporting, things can change.
Celestine Sibley
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A good book is a good book, and there are a lot of different ways to approach writing or reading one.
Emily Barton
