Writing Quotes - Page 300

Writing is putting one's obsessions in order.

A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.

When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't. I have a knack for disturbing.

Word meanings are like stretchy pullovers, whose outline contour is visible, but whose detailed shape varies with use.

President James Garfield could write in Latin with one hand while writing in Greek with the other. I would give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

That's the best advice I can give - when you're trying to write a comedy, first write a drama, and then make it funny.

By the end of the writing process, which is about 80 songs per album, I look at the material and think, what's going to make a difference in someone's life.

He's trying to do info-tainment. He doesn't really want to talk about trans issues, he wants to sensationalize my life and not really talk about the work that I do and what the purpose of me writing this book was about.

Well, I think some people are very happy in retirement. And in a year and a half I'm going to see how happy I feel in retirement. I'm just going to not work quite so hard, but I'll continue to write as long as God gives me breath.

An artist's career always begins tomorrow

I am never as clear about any matter as when I have finished writing about it.

Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good.

There'll come a writing phase where you have to defend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.

What is the ultimate impulse to write? Because all this is going to vanish.

Life is a sheet of paper white / Whereon each one of us may write / His word or two, and then comes night.

If it's commercial fiction that you want to write, it's story, story, story. You've got to get a story where if you tell it to somebody in a paragraph, they'll go, "Tell me more." And then when you start to write it, they continue to want to read more. And if you don't, it won't work.

All good plots come from well-orchestrated characters pitted against one another in a conflict of wills.

Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.

Beauty has never been an important topic in the writings of the major psychologists. In fact, for Jung, aesthetics is a weak, early stage of development. He follows the Germanic view that ethics is more important than aesthetics, and he draws a stark contrast between the two. Freud may have written about literature a bit, but an aesthetic sensitivity is not part of his psychology.

A lot of times, I'll have a goal, I'll start writing, and I'll end up in some far off place, which is good. It's nice to have a focus, but letting the lyrics write themselves where they need to go is important.

In any creative endeavor, you do have to sort of take your shots. Nobody is going to beg you to go into the creative arts. So, if you want to pursue a career in something like acting or writing, the motor and the drive have to come from you. And that does take courage because, A, a lot of people want to do it, and B, it's hard. So, you have to have the guts to put yourself out there and go for it in spite of the world saying, "You know, it would be so much easier, if you didn't pursue this." So, it does take guts.

I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.

In writing the new films, I’ve come to realize that AVATAR’s world, story and characters have become even richer than I anticipated, and it became apparent that two films would not be enough to capture everything I wanted to put on screen.