Writing Quotes
-
With 'Free Agent Nation,' I was figuring out how to write a book along with writing the book. Now I think I've kind of, sort of figured out how to write a book a little bit better. But the process remains not that different - slow; laborious; tiny, incremental progress each day, punctuated by feelings of despair and self-loathing.
Dan Pink
-
You're under the gun at all times because it's live TV. A lot of time, between dress and air, you're having to come with an entire ending to your sketch that gets an even better, bigger laugh - which is terrifying... People are filing into the audience, and you're writing a new joke for the end of it.
Paula Pell
-
I had no interest or intention of ever writing music. I was a professional violinist in my 20s. I was obsessed with conducting, and I was conducting as much as I could, and I was studying as much as I could. I went to USC; I got an undergrad degree in violin and a master's degree in conducting.
David Newman
-
I'm a provincial. I live very much like a hermit: reading, listening to music, working in the cutting room, writing, commercial work - which doesn't take up that much time.
Orson Welles
-
You can write a radical Norwegian or a conservative Norwegian. And when I changed to a conservative Norwegian, I gained this distance or objectivity in the language. The gap released something in me, and in the writing, which made it possible for the protagonist to think thoughts I had never myself thought.
Karl Ove Knausgaard
-
Writing is a discipline: it's almost all about holding back.
Rachel Cusk
-
At the time I was writing the second album, I was sitting home in my underwear all day every day; I didn't have all that much to write about except for my own life and my family.
Mac DeMarco
-
There's this element of surprise when you're writing songs, like it's something outside of you that you get to be part of. And it's just exciting. And that's why I keep writing - because I like that feeling.
Nathaniel Rateliff
-
I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.
Irvine Welsh
-
I am resigned to the fact that people who don't know me loathe me. Perhaps it is because I am a woman writing poetry. It must be annoying to a man who wants to write to see this horrid old lady who can.
Edith Sitwell
-
I think when I was younger I was not very good at writing love songs that didn't have a twist.
Elvis Costello
-
I'm disregarding all the rules I've seen as people approach writing music. I'm trying to break them.
Verite
-
I think that most people who hire me to do a remix just want it to work in a nightclub, whereas when I'm writing my own album, I don't have to worry so much about 2 A.M.
Kaskade
-
It's the thing I struggle with every day: the mental diligence and stamina needed to sit in front of the computer, open the file, start writing and to keep doing so, word after word, until I've created the next story. A combination of learning disability and chronic health issues make that the hardest thing for me.
Nalo Hopkinson
-
I often feel like not writing! Sometimes I overcome it by just sitting there until writing happens. Sometimes I don't write, because books often need periods of percolation.
Nancy Pickard
-
Micro computers used as word processors complement the audio facilities, enabling the interactive teaching of all four language skills reading, listening, speaking and writing.
David Crystal
-
I've heard that some authors do dream their books and I would love that if it happened to me, but so far it hasn't. Sometimes I'll get a good idea during the night and if I don't write it down, I won't remember it the next morning.
Judy Blume
-
Writing has been handed to me on a plate.
Irvine Welsh
-
May I write words more naked than flesh, stronger than bone, more resilient than sinew, sensitive than nerve.
Sappho
-
I try to begin writing as close to a dreamlike state as I can get.
Philipp Meyer
-
The play is one of the very few pieces of great dramatic and comic writing that I have read in a long, long time. I was drawn to it because of the power of the writing, which gives me the actor a chance to explore many facets of myself.
Linda Lavin
-
I usually have about four books on the go - a bedside book, a lavatory book, a downstairs book, and the book in my study that I read sneakily while I should be writing. Short stories for the lavatory, obviously.
Mal Peet
-
Instead of writing songs for girls, I tend to write albums, which I guess is a bit weird.
Ed Sheeran
-
Freedom to tell any story I want, with all the imaginary tools of my trade, is why I love writing novels. I love taking an idea, fleshing it out into a new world - and going on adventures with characters who day-dream themselves into existence and take on lives of their own.
Marjorie Liu