Writing Quotes
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To think of writing poetry as a "career" is not only ridiculous, it's dangerous. To the imagination. To the way one thinks of art. The reason poetry as a genre is so special is because it cannot be made a commodity.
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I write the paragraph, then I'm crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometimes it's almost illegible, and if I wait, I might not be able to read it the next day.
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The trouble with the publishing business is that too many people who have half a mind to write a book do so.
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The trick is the paradox - turning your story inside out. Now if it is something that appears to be of total normality and then suddenly turns inside out and is a different thing all together then that's fun to write.
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It was a great place to write a novel about book burning, in the library basement.
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I don't see writing as a communication of something already discovered, as "truths" already known. Rather, I see writing as a job of experiment. It's like any discovery job; you don't know what's going to happen until you try it.
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There are so many rules about play writing. I'd have a nervous breakdown if I followed them.
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I don't think comedians make an active decision to be a certain "persona." Comedians write the way they're going to write.
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The problem with feminism in the second wave was that we fought so much among ourselves, and I think we did so much damage to the movement... and I think the next wave, the third wave, is women mentoring younger women and women helping younger women to enter the political process and the writing world.
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When I start, I have a feeling for the characters, and maybe the shape of the story. Sometimes I might even have the last sentence in mind. But, no book I've ever written has ever ended the way I thought it would. Characters disappear, others come forward. Once you start writing, everything changes.
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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.
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Not to write, for many of us, is to die. We must take ares each and every day, perhaps knowing that the battle cannot be entirely won, but fight we must, if only a gentle bout. The smallest effort to win means, at the end of each day, a sort of victory.
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Those who say they would write a book if only they had time will never become authors.
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One thing I want to say: I don't like victim stories and I don't write them.
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I think that as you learn more about writing you learn to be direct.
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Writing is the most personal form of prayer.
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In Dogen's writing, the practical instruction, philosophy and poetry are together in one voice. People hear about his poetry, go to his work, and expect to find poetry, or they hear about his philosophy and expect to find philosophy. They look just for practical instruction and find poetry and philosophy. They can't make out the complexity of his writing, become frustrated and let him go.
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I don't really like to just sit down at a computer and write because that tends to be a little forced. Sometimes the funniest ideas just happen in the moment, when you're talking to people, or you notice something.
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Comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write.
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I feel uninhibited when I'm writing.
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The writing, acting and the directing all complement each other and make each other better. It's one of those amazing instances where everything seems to come together.
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What I love is the writing, it's not having written. I like the process of it.
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If the motive of writing is for some people a kind of exercise in dirty laundry, that's one thing. I've always thought of my poems as meant to be overheard, as I think all of these poems are. It seems to me if you get experience right, even your most painful or humiliating experiences - if you get those experiences right for yourself and make discoveries as you go along and find for them some formal glue - they will be poems for others.
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I'm of the school 'Write what you know.' You can educate yourself, but the best writing usually comes from the heart.
