Writing Quotes
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A novel may take anywhere from two to five years to write and, in the end, you might manage a couple of thousand dollars on it, no more.
Mordecai Richler
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I would not see our candle blown out in the wind. It is a small thing, this dear gift of life handed us mysteriously out of immensity. I would not have that gift expire... If I seem to be beating a dead horse again and again, I must protest: No! I am beating, again and again, living man to keep him awake and move his limbs and jump his mind... What's the use of looking at Mars through a telescope, sitting on panels, writing books, if it isn't to guarantee, not just the survival of mankind, but mankind surviving forever!
Ray Bradbury
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When you're on a staff, it's not your job to write what you think is funny. It's your job to write what the person who created the show thinks is funny.
Billy Lawrence
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I was never unhappy with the shows. I didn't get into [the writing]. I had an area. My area was my character. My area was what they gave me to do.
David Rasche
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If you told me to write a love song tonight, I'd have a lot of trouble. But if you tell me to write a love song about a girl with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that's a lot easier, and it makes me free to say anything I want.
Stephen Sondheim
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I continue to write. It's just one of those things that I do. I'll have periods when I write and periods when I don't. But you don't want it to become a discipline really. If it becomes a discipline, it becomes a chore and that's no good.
Greg Lake
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Dave Eggers is a prince among men when it comes to writing deeply felt, socially conscious books that meld reportage with fiction. While A Hologram for the King is fiction...it's a strike against the current state of global economic injustice.
Elissa Schappell
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It is evident from their writings that the Founding Fathers would never have tolerated the separation that we have embraced today. They knew that religious principles provided morality and self-control - the lifeblood for the survival of any self-governing community.
David Barton
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I could not write about a subject sacred to me because I would be too flippant. Fortunately, there are no subjects sacred to me.
Joseph Heller
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I feel so disassociated from my writing - whether it's in book form or magazine - that I sometimes have a hard time believing that it's mine.
Michael Paterniti
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I'm also always thinking about the score as a recording, as opposed to a performance that can be recreated in a live environment. Some of what I write could of course be played in a concert hall, but for the needs of a film I don't consider that.
Geoff Zanelli
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Regarding pushing the form, ideas interest me more than form. I think you can write a very subversive play in a three-act structure. The content makes the play. I feel the form is simply dressing, because ultimately, you want to communicate to the audience, and sometimes the best way to do that is to present a provocative idea in a format that is comfortable for them to receive. Then the idea will come through directly, right in solar plexus. After all, I want to make a living as an artist, and that means speaking to the audience in a form they can understand.
Caridad Svich
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You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.
Alice Mattison
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When I'm writing, I thoroughly enjoy it. It just goes on.
Malachy McCourt
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Writing on a computer feels like a recipe for writer's block. I can type so fast that I run out of thoughts, and then I sit there and look at the words on the screen, and move them around, and never get anywhere. Whereas in a notebook I just keep plodding along, slowly, accumulating sentences, sometimes even surprising myself.
Chad Harbach
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As every writer knows... there is something mysterious about the writer's ability, on any given day, to write. When the juices are flowing, or the writer is 'hot', an invisible wall seems to fall away, and the writer moves easily and surely from one kind of reality to another... Every writer has experienced at least moments of this strange, magical state. Reading student fiction one can spot at once where the power turns on and where it turns off, where the writer writes from 'inspiration' or deep, flowing vision, and where he had to struggle along on mere intellect.
John Gardner
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Any topical subject, if it's Hollywood, will be a couple of years later because you've got to write it, produce it and distribute it, so automatically you're never going to be right on the cutting edge of stories.
George Clooney
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Everything characters say or do is a clue to their personalities, their histories, and the forces that motivate them.
William G. Tapply