Writing Quotes
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I do that a lot of authors still do not do is allow people to write directly to me. I get about 50 fan letters a day, and I answer every single one of them myself. It takes a lot of time and sometimes it's a pain in the neck and I answer the same questions over and over. But the truth is these people come to my readings clutching these letters saying, "You wrote me back. I can't believe you wrote me back", and I think it really means a lot for them to know that the author values them just as much as they value the author.
Steven Tyler
Aerosmith
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I'd like to rid myself of writing, to surrender, to release the venom. And hopefully at some point, I'll be a happy, well-adjusted guy and I'll have no need for all that 'art.'
Henry Rollins
Black Flag
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When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find that's all you are - a spine, a row of rattling vertebrae, dried out like an old quill pen.
Hilary Mantel
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So many (too many) books are published every year, and it seems everyone is writing a book. Perhaps we should all be reading more and writing less!
Tracy Chevalier
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No doubt, there are those who believe that judges - and particularly dissenting judges - write to hear themselves say, as it were, 'I, I, I.' And no doubt, there are also those who believe that judges are, like Joan Didion, primarily engaged in the writing of fiction. I cannot agree with either of those propositions.
William J. Brennan, Jr.
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I honestly don't have many creative outlets. I'm not crafty - although motherhood has forced me to try to be - and I can only draw trees, beaches, and clouds. I'm a so-so cook except for deviled eggs. Writing has always been the one thing I feel that I am pretty good at doing. But it's enough, thank goodness.
Sarah Dessen
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I'm not saying that I don't experience people in life as evil, but writing is not a place of alienation; writing is the place where we can try to be human. I think there are some artists whose works are misanthropic. When I see this kind of stuff, I think, they're smart, but I don't need art to tell me people are assholes. I can just go into the streets.
Etgar Keret
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Above all, a query letter is a sales pitch and it is the single most important page an unpublished writer will ever write. It's the first impression and will either open the door or close it. It's that important, so don't mess it up. Mine took 17 drafts and two weeks to write.
Nicholas Sparks
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I'm a visual thinker. With almost all of my writing, I start with something that's visual: either the way someone says something that is visual or an actual visual description of a scene and color.
Gerald Vizenor
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What could be more exciting when the writing is going well and things are falling into place? It's just like riding a fabulous wave for a surfer. There's no better place to be.
Paul Fleischman
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Being in L.A., it was really hard to find a country writer and producer. I eventually - years of searching - found this guy, Dan Franklin. He's an incredible musician and producer. We write so well together... It's been a really cool experience.
Sasha Pieterse
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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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Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.... [W]hat can we bequeath, Save our deposed bodies to the ground?... [N]othing can we call our own, but death... [L]et us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the death of kings: - How some have been depos'd, some slain in war; Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd.
William Shakespeare
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I perform well under pressure, but I don't write well under pressure, because for me, writing is truly about emotion that you can't put a timeline on.
Mickey Guyton
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We write to find out what we didn’t know we knew. We write to know deeper and truer. We write to connect the dots: a whole new constellation.
Carolyn Coman
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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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One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there.
Stephen Sondheim
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The act of writing, through its peculiar alchemy whereby the fruits of the mind are transformed into symbols intelligible to all literate minds—this is the greatest magic, perhaps.
Alexander C. Irvine
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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.
William Hazlitt
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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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To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.
Nelson Algren
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The challenge to writers today, I think, is not to disown any part of our heritage. Whatever our theme in writing, it is old and tried. Whatever our place, it has been visited by the stranger, it will never be new again. It is only the vision that can be new; but that is enough.
Eudora Welty
