Writing Quotes
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A lot of the surreal writing that I love is really dreamlike. Like Murakami. He uses the real world, and it's pretty recognizable, but its populated by these strange visitors, or it has these underground spaces. I was always really compelled by that.
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To attempt to write seriously is always, I feel, to fail - the disjunction between my beautifully sonorous, accurate and painfully affecting mental content, and the leaden, halting sentences on the page always seems a dreadful falling short.
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Any great character is the combination of a brilliant actor and the right writing.
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When you're writing first person, all I can see and tell as the author is what that main character can see.
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As an actor, I come to set, and I have already broken the character down by writing a poem about the character. I try to write in his voice, the way he would write it.
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I'm enslaved to writing to the point where I sacrifice almost everything else.
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I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta: Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.
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I love Mikhail Bulgakov. He is very original and takes the story to unexpected places. I didn't realise political writing could be so funny.
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In writing 'William Shakespeare's Star Wars,' I had the freedom to go beyond the original script and add asides, soliloquys and even new scenes. The main characters all get a soliloquy or two - or in Luke's case, several.
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Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.
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I always had a thing for writing. Even when I was in school, I was always good at writing.
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You know, we should have cards like the deaf have. "Can't talk, I'm writing today."
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I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.
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Writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too.
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Read like mad. But try to do it analytically - which can be hard, because the better and more compelling a novel is, the less conscious you will be of its devices. It's worth trying to figure those devices out, however: they might come in useful in your own work.
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In high school, I wanted to be an actress. Until I got to college and took some creative writing courses. Then I decided I wanted to become a novelist.
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I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.
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Encourage aspiring writers to continue writing when things are going against them, when it feels hard. Explain the typical obstacles that occur, and encourage and reassure them to continue, never to give up.
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I got jury duty and I didn't want to go, so my friend said, "You should write something really really racist on the form when you return it. Like, you should put 'I hate chinks'." And I said, "I'm not going to put that on there just to get out of jury duty. I don't want people to think that about me." So instead I wrote, "I love chinks." And who doesn't?
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Arrange whatever pieces come your way.
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I distrust thought. The interior life is highly overrated. I don't like the wispy and the vague... or inductive logic in any kind of writing. I'm impatient with writers who make too much sense. The better things that I've done have come to me by instinct.
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I prefer writing in the mornings, so to that extent I have a routine. I do reading and other things in the afternoon.
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I'd love to act more. I've had to turn down multiple movies because I was on tour, but it's encouraging to know that someday there might be the right role, the right timing. And I've been writing a lot of music, so hopefully very soon I'll have recorded a project of my own. I also want to get a boat and open a restaurant.
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My brain is dull, my sight is foul, I cannot write a verse, or read-- Then, Pallas, take away thine Owl, And let us have a lark instead.
