Writing Quotes - Page 321

Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea. If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing.

A lot of times when songwriters get together and write a song... somebody will come in with a hook and a lot of times they come out with something that sounds a little crafty.

I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.

Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.

The Holocaust is a central event in many people's lives, but it also has become a metaphor for our century. There cannot be an end to speaking and writing about it. Besides, in Israel, everyone carries a biography deep inside him.

real letter-writing ... is founded on a need as old and as young as humanity itself, the need that one human being has of another.

God bless my soul, woman, the more personal you are the better! This is a story of human beings - not dummies! Be personal - be prejudiced - be catty - be anything you please! Write the thing your own way. We can always prune out the bits that are libellous afterwards!

Writing is a great comfort to people like me, who are unsure of themselves and have trouble expressing themselves properly.

You have to give your art everything you can - I don't mean only writing, but studying other poets and poetics, thinking, reading what poets have written other than their poetry.

I long to create something that can't be used to keep us passive: I want to write a script about plumbing, how every pipe is joined to every other.

Some people have enough dust on their bibles to write damnation on it.

And now, advice for beginning mystics. Be sober, be intelligent, be educated, rely on the tangible reality as long as you can. Remember that the act of writing is a tiny part of a bigger something. Defend the value of the spiritual experience and if somebody tells you it's an old fashioned notion, laugh loudly and serenely.

After my tour I had time to stay at home, be with my boyfriend and hang out with friends and that brought me down to earth and helped me write music from a more relaxed place.

I couldn't write a song to save my life. I wouldn't say that I started to panic, but I was definitely getting frustrated. I couldn't even cross a t or dot an i.

I can write better than anyone who can write faster.

Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.

Because of a friend, life is a little stronger, fuller, more gracious thing for the friend's existence, whether he be near or far. If the friend is close at hand, that is best; but if he is far away he still is there to think of, to wonder about, to hear from, to write to, to share life and experience with, to serve, to honor, to admire, to love.

If the English language had been properly organized ... then there would be a word which meant both 'he' and 'she', and I could write, 'If John or Mary comes heesh will want to play tennis', which would save a lot of trouble.

Be wary of feeling as through there is not enough room at the table. Oftentimes a female Chinese-American might feel as through she is in competition with another Chinese-American woman writer of the same generation. A writer friend of mine calls it the "There Can Only Be One ..." syndrome. This isn't "Survivor." The more good writers, of all walks of life and all ethnicities and persuasions, the better.

Perhaps, it is just as well to be rash and foolish for a while. If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would be written at all. It might be better to ask yourself "Why?" afterwards than before. Anyway, the force from somewhere in Space which commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice. You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.

I get lots of ideas when the lights go out at night and it gets very quiet. Sometimes they come when I first lie down to sleep; other times I wake up with an idea racing through my mind. But regardless of when an idea comes, I have made it a habit to get out of bed and write the idea down before it disappears into my dreams. You should do the same.

I could write a treatise on the sudden transformation of life into archaeology

I didn't want the lyrics to be about specific things in my life, I wanted them to be about generalised experiences I'd had. So when I'm writing about relationships or somebody leaving you or something, a lot of lyrics are partly about failed relationships I'd had, but they were also about my Dad, and being abandoned as a kid.

I'm writing songs about New York. A lot of them carry the names of neighborhoods in Long Island. Maspeth, Montauk. I'm getting into the idea of a F. Scott Fitzgerald-esque Long Island back when New York was...New York.

I would never really listen to my own music or whatever, but I write music so I can deal with things and I hope that some people can relate in that. Maybe help people, or just bring a smile to their face or make them feel cool or something.