Writing Quotes
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Writing is very castrating in the moment. Fiction in general, it has no function, nobody asks for it.
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Too many people write books because they want to be a New York Times best-seller. They want the glory and the fame.
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I love to talk with children. I try to visit schools but it's hard for me to travel when I'm trying to write. Some authors are able to do both.
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The stranger might laugh and seem to enjoy the writing, but you hug to yourself the thought that they didn't quite understand its force and quality the way you do - just as your friends (thank heavens) don't also fall in love with the person you are going on and on about to them.
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I like to read fiction best and I like to write fiction, too.
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I am never happy when I finish a book. I always start feeling good, and then I get to about Page 75 and start losing momentum - and I kind of pull it together at the end, but by then I think it's just all over. It's become almost a running joke among my agent and my editor - I always say that, so they don't take me seriously anymore.
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A lot of my close friends had tolerantly washed their hands of the whole idea of me writing a book. They had said to themselves, "I don't know what he's doing."
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Whatever I write I publish. Because that's where the money is.
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I think what I've recognized over the years is that I'm very, very bingey, extremely bingey when it comes to writing.
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I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathesome and inhumane.
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Face it, you have to be sort of an egomaniac to write something down and think that anyone is going to want to read it.
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Honestly, as hard a profession as acting is, I think music is even harder. Acting, you're like a leech, because someone else does the hard part for you. They write it for you, then the director tells you what to do. You really just need to know how to pay attention, follow instructions.
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I just think, as writers, especially with a book that takes years to write, you sort of wake up every morning hoping and praying that you can make it work for the day.
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A lot of my own relatives didn't get to go to school because we were mountain people. You have to get out and work and help feed the family. My own dad couldn't read and write. And my dad was very proud of me.
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Give yourself time to get better.
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Sometimes I claim I write because I put in an application at Sears and they've never called back.
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I keep recycling and repackaging music that I've done in the past, as though I can't write anymore. Like, okay, I'm done with that. But I need to kind of prod myself again into come on, Herbie, get off your duff and start writing some new music.
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I've realized that I have a lot of different loves, and I want to pursue writing, but I can never divorce myself from music.
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I don't tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.
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I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since.
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You have to constantly arrange yourself around them, and that can take up a lot of energy. I mean, you don't go, "Why don't you cook dinner tonight, dear, for a change, instead of writing a great song?" I loved what [Paul Simon] did with words. But I wanted to do some more of that, too.
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It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to say was terrible and afraid. But what he would tell her was so true that it would make everything all right. Maybe it was a thing that could not be spoken with words or writing. Maybe he would have to let her understand this in a different way. That was the feeling she had with him.
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In order for you to be yourself, you have to be somebody first.
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I've honestly always been an overly analytical, highly observant person. I was playing music but thinking about it at same time, which was sort of exhausting. Aside from the pain of writing - you're not really in a gang like you are in band, it's a little bit lonelier - I think it was always something that I'd wanted to do. So the transition wasn't abrupt or painful.
