Writing Quotes
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It's funny how that comes up, because sometimes I'll write something and I'll think, I don't know if that's a film or a play, and then other things I feel very strongly about them just being plays - they feel very theatrical to me.
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Where would you like to go, what would you really like to do with your life? See Istanbul, Port Said, Nairobi, Budapest. Write a book. Smoke too many cigarettes. Fall off a cliff but get caught in a tree halfway down. Get shot at a few times in a dark alley on a Morrocan midnight. Love a beautiful woman.
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The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.
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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.
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I write not for your farthing, but to try. How I your farthing writers, may outvie.
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To write, you must first belong to yourself.
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I'm not calculating enough in the way I approach writing.
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I've had to write in a different way because I'm not in a bad place and I'm not heartbroken, so there's no one I want revenge on.
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My writing process, such as it is, consists of a lot of noodling, procrastinating, dawdling, and avoiding.
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I don't read reviews any more, but I'm told by my publisher who gives me an account of what people have been writing and it's been a very split kind of response.
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Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.
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Don't ever let anyone else write your story for you.
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One hasn't become a writer until one has distilled writing into a habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession. Writing has to be an obsession. It has to be something as organic, physiological and psychological as speaking or sleeping or eating.
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The fastest way to teach a child to read is to teach them to write.
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There's this stress that is relieved when you realize somebody understands, and that's only going to happen if you feel the person who's writing the book or the people in the TV show aren't holding back.
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I like to write things to be personal, so I just put what I'm thinking about at the time.
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All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.
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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.
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A lot of my words come to me when I'm out and about as well, riding the bus or sat in the pub. I went through a stage of going to a strip bar called the White Horse at lunch times and did a lot of writing in there. They were fine with that but I don't know how they would feel about me setting up the easel.
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The preservation of the Jew was certainly not casual. He has endured through the power of a certain ideal, based on the recognition of a Higher Power in human affairs. Time after time in his history, moreover, he has been saved from disaster in a manner, which cannot be described excepting as 'providential.' The author has deliberately attempted to write this book in a secular spirit; he does not think that his readers can fail to see in it, on every page, a higher immanence
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The acting background helped a lot when I started writing. I was training for it. In acting class they teach you about the stakes in a scene (and) what motivates characters. When you bring a scene to class - as an actor with your scene partner - you have to do everything. There's no producer, set decorator or anything like that. You and you partner have to do everything and that's kind of like facing the blank page as a writer.
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I feel quite at home writing short stories but nervous and anxious when writing novels, as if the bad time of consecutive failures might arise again.
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I think that whether you've just begun writing or whether you've been writing for fifty years - I mean, I'm excited to get there and tell you about it when I do - I think that there's always the challenge of believing in yourself enough to get the work done and not being so taken with yourself that you're unwilling to continue to work on the work.
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Writing a nonfiction story is like cracking a safe. It seems impossible at the beginning, but once you're in, you're in.
