Writing Quotes
-
The stories are there first, and they come from my experiences wandering around in the world. They will resonate into bigger things, forces sweeping the planet, themes and archetypes, but I'm not smart enough to have lucid integration of all that in my head as I'm writing.
-
One of the things I write about a bit in my Madam Secretary memoir is on Rwanda, where I was an instructed ambassador at the U.N., and my instructions were to not vote for increased forces there, and I didn't like my instructions. So I got up and called Washington and said, "Change my instructions," and they didn't.
-
Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.
-
No woman will ever satisfy me. I know that now, and I would never try to deny it. But this is actually okay, because I will never satisfy a woman, either. Should I be writing such thoughts? Perhaps not. Perhaps it’s a bad idea. I can definitely foresee a scenario where that first paragraph could come back to haunt me, especially if I somehow became marginally famous.
-
Getting ahead in a difficult profession - singing, acting, writing, whatever requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows and unfair reversals. When I think back to those first couple of years in Rome, those endless rejections, without a glimmer of encouragement from anyone, all those failed screen tests, and yet I never let my desire slide away from me, my belief in myself and what I felt I could achieve.
-
If you start off writing an album with a band, the reality is that you're constantly in each other's company, so it's really important that you get on with each other.
-
A lot of the time, I don't actually relate to what I'm writing about in pop songs.
-
If I weren't a performer, I would be still be writing and songwriting. Plus, I also really want to get into producing.
-
I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images.
-
I love the whole process for each new album. The writing, the touring, everything. For me, it never gets old.
-
I had been writing professionally since 1988.
-
As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are.
-
I think I give far more space and play to avant-garde writing than any other contemporary textbook author. I want students to be able to decide for themselves which aesthetics are closest to their own. Still, while I try not to be a nostalgist myself, I suppose I am drawn to those poignant moments in our lives, rendered clearly and artfully.
-
A certain luxury when you get to writing a novel is to have the space to have your characters just banter.
-
I never see myself as writing satire. I think I write about people as they really are, without making them better or worse.
-
It's a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final word.
-
I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.
-
I like singing all songs, really, but I find that writing social commentary comes naturally.
-
It's really hard for me, every day, to confront my writing. It never gets easier over time.
-
Honestly, all of 'Breaking Bad' was the best television experience of my entire life - the writing, the crew, the other actors.
-
Most of the time, when I'm writing, I'm writing for myself. I'm thinking, 'What will my character say at this time? What will come out of her mouth?' I create individuals so real to me, I sometimes start talking to them. Then I let them loose on the page.
-
If your writing collides with the conventional wisdom, there's going to be some kind of friction.
-
I liked Sartre's views but not his writing.
-
Well, I just wanted to be a person. I just wanted them to keep writing me as humanistic as possible.
