Writing Quotes
-
I'm a first - I was the first person in my family born in the United States. My mom is from Croatia, and my dad is from Iran. They met at music school in Belgium. I grew up as a pianist. I was really interested in piano and sort of discovered that I was a writer when I was about 13 and started writing.
-
If I weren't a performer, I would be still be writing and songwriting. Plus, I also really want to get into producing.
-
I like the mix of stuff I do. I love movies, but I also enjoy performing live and writing songs.
-
I busted out of the place in a hurry and went to a saloon and drank beer and said that for the rest of my life I'd never take a job in a place where you couldn't throw cigarette butts on the floor. I was hooked on this writing for newspapers and magazines.
-
When I'm writing, I like to seal everything off and face the wall, not to look outside the window. The only way out is through the sentences.
-
I really like comedy. There's always a choice, when you're writing: you can either go for the joke or you can go for the story, the important stuff.
-
I've been a list maker for years, even before I was a musician. I was always writing things down and kept long lists of things that would make good album titles and things like that. I'm constantly thinking in terms of songwriting.
-
Each song is a small universe to me. Each song has a story of its own. Each has a full life to express in order to be complete, so it often happens that the building to a big crescendo feels right in the recording or writing process.
-
The craft of writing is all the stuff that you can learn through school; go to workshops and read books. Learn characterization, plot and dialogue and pacing and word choice and point of view. Then there's also the art of it which is sort of the unknown, the inspiration, the stuff that is noncerebral.
-
I love film and have taken a stab at a screenplay. I love writing dialogue and found it highly enjoyable.
-
It's hard to imagine my life not writing. I love it.
-
There's a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast.
-
I have found, writing a blog, that being non-opaque is necessary. You pretty much have to say what you know in much more firm terms or risk that the legions who always know more than you do will tell the story better.
-
Trying to write while I'm distracted definitely doesn't work for me. I'm also a compulsive saver of my files, so every writing session ends with me emailing what I've written to myself, just in case.
-
I'm usually too shy to write on planes because I assume that everyone on board is as nosy as I am and will look over my shoulder and read what I'm writing.
-
I write just because the fire of my emotion is burning. Had I not, I would not have been able to find peace.
-
If there was anything that I learned with my own writing process, maybe there's too many choices what to write about. Just the amount of subject matter in the world these days; maybe that feels chaotic for me.
-
The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.
-
The writing comes first for me. Not Facebook, not Twitter, not the Internet or signings or merchandise, or 'the career.' Everything begins and ends with the writing for me, and I build my entire life around sitting my butt down 365 days a year.
-
I liked the idea of being a writer more than I liked the idea of writing.
-
It's one of the strangest attributes of this profession that when we writers get exhausted writing one thing, we relax by writing another.
-
When I write, I don't allow the fear of consequences to interfere with the writing process. I have in the past paid for my commitment to the truth and the way I live my life. I am prepared to pay more if I have to.
-
The main characters for 'The Seer and the Sword' made an appearance one night and then haunted me for over five years before I began to write them down. Does that count as inspiration? For me, characters tend to show up, stay on to help with the work of writing their stories, and then occasionally deign to visit after a book is finished.
-
My work is not my life. I started writing quite late, I didn't have that 'writing is everything, my art is all.' You have to be able to recognise the difference between the two.
