Writing Quotes
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Sometimes I'll have an end in mind, but it's always false, always corny, just a dumb idea anyone could have, sitting on a barstool. An abstract thesis with no real life inside it. And then I start writing and the writing itself confounds me, taking away the comfort of knowing the end in advance. How is that even possible? Doesn't the conclusion come at the end? How can you begin with one - that seems odd, right?
Charles D'Ambrosio
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After he made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the hospital, Yossarian wrote letters to everyone he knew saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why. One day he had a better idea. To everyone he knew he wrote that he was going on a very dangerous mission. "They asked for volunteers. It's very dangerous, but someone has to do it. I'll write you the instant I get back." And he had not written anyone since.
Joseph Heller
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There have been times when I've written something and it goes out and it comes back in a letter from some kid as to what they think about it and I've taken their analysis to heart so much that I have taken up his thing. Writing what my audience is telling me to write.
David Bowie
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I wish writing was a talent that I had. I've tried. Unfortunately, I'm just not talented in the writing department. But, if I was, I would just write complicated roles for women because there's a lack of them.
Eva Mendes
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A piece of writing takes exactly as long as it needs to be done right.
Norma Fox Mazer
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I really like writing in English, and it's the best job I've ever had.
Nell Zink
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About Swami Vivekanada: I am not saying that the message of the Swami was the final word in our nationalism... But it was tremendous - something with an undying glory of its own. If you read his books, if you read his lectures, you are struck at once with his love of humanity, his patriotism, not abstract patriotism which came to us from Europe but of different nature altogether a more living thing, something which we feel within ourselves when we read his writings.
Chittaranjan Das
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The Internet is a tool, a technology, and we like to say that it has all of these properties, but really, it's just a place where our writing is.
Joshua Cohen
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An author is often obscure to the reader because they proceed from the thought to expression than like the reader from the expression to the thought.
Sébastien-Roch Nicolas
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I love writing every song I can like a little mini movie. I like to have a character, or some characters, and really paint a picture with the song.
Dolly Parton
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The business of writing is one of the four or five most private things in the world.
Ethel Wilson
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Good directing is good writing and good casting.
Robert Zemeckis
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I always write as I like to write, and I've been thinking about it because I honestly didn't realize how different my stuff is, until I started looking at other people's scripts as a producer.
William Monahan
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Love is the bridge that leads from the I sense to the We, and there is a paradox about personal love. Love of another individual opens a new relation between the personality and the world. The lover responds in a new way to nature and may even write poetry. Love is affirmation; it motivates the yes responses and the sense of wider communication. Love casts out fear, and in the security of this togetherness we find contentment, courage. We no longer fear the age-old haunting questions: "Who am I?" "Why am I?" "Where am I going?" - and having cast out fear, we can be honest and charitable.
Carson McCullers
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I remember writing ‘All I Want Is You' and hoping it would get me out of trouble. I haven't stopped writing songs or getting into trouble since.
Cheyenne Kimball
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The strange thing, though, is that most people who write novels these days seem to be aware of only a fraction of its possibilities. Kundera goes on and on about this, and I never tire of reading him on the subject, because I agree very deeply with it.
Teju Cole
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I said it before and I’ll say it again: books are dead, plays are dead, poems are dead: there’s only movies. Music is still okay, because music is sound track. Ten, fifteen years ago, every arts student wanted to be a novelist or a playwright. I’d be amazed if you could find a single one now with such a dead-end ambition. They all want to make movies. Not write movies. You don’t write movies. You make movies.
Stephen Fry
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The only other thing which I think is important is: Don't write a book or start a book with the expectation of communicating a message in a very important way.
Norton Juster