Writing Quotes - Page 341

A lot of movies that come from Israel are about war, but there is such good, funny, rounded writing that comes from the country that I wish more people would discover.

If there's any single talent a writer needs, it's persistence. If you can keep at your writing and you can learn as you write, you can tell any story you want to tell.

I'm trying to speak--to write-the truth. I"m trying to be clear. I'm not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.

I'll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

Most of my writing consists of an attempt to translate aphorisms into continuous prose.

There's a lot of personal stuff that can go into songwriting but there's also a lot of dramatization and fictionalization. You have to do that to make a good song.

I don't think you can write - at least not well - if you don't love stories, love the written word.

I can fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank page.

I don't care who you are. When you sit down to write the first page of your screenplay, in your head, you're also writing your Oscar acceptance speech.

In order to even begin to learn how to play his instrument, it takes the guitarist weeks to build calluses on his fingertips; it takes the saxophonist months to strengthen his lip so that he might play his instrument for only a five-minute stretch; it can take the pianist years to develop dual hand and multiple finger coordination. Why do writers assume they can just “write” with no training whatsoever-and then expect, on their first attempt, to be published internationally? What makes them think they're so much inherently greater, need so much less training than any other artists?

I believe the time will come when the whole definition of pop music will change. It will get to the point where a song will not be a good song until it has a high level of creativity in writing and performance. In other words, in order to be popular, songs will have to meet these high standards.

A writer's work may be a coded autobiography, but only a very close friend could decipher it.

One good reason for writing novels based on your life is that you have something to read in old age when you've forgotten what happened.

You can learn to write. But what you write is something that depends on your taste and on your vision or whatever. Also, of course, the music I listened to inspired my idea of music. When people ask me "Where's your inspiration? Where does it come from?" I have no idea. Music is about music. Not about life and love.

Almost all the producers I know and dig, like Quincy Jones or Brian Eno, are really musicians first. I'm a composer, an orchestrator, an arranger and a musician first. I know how to write and rewrite songs, and the genius is really in the rewriting.

I say one thing, you write another, and those who read you understand still something else! I say: cross, death, kingdom of heaven, God...and what do you understand? Each of you attaches his own suffering, interests and desires to each of these sacred words, and my words disappear, my soul is lost. I can't stand it any longer!

I think anything thats creative really takes my mind off whatever it is that Im going through in my life. If youre going through heartbreak, and you can write a song, its a wonderful win-win, because it takes your mind off the heartbreak, and you get to vent.

I wrote lots of scripts that never got made and they were terrible. I thought they were good at the time. You can't write two scripts and expect your career to take off. Keep writing. Be you. Be original. A lot of people go for a genre, which is fine if you can do that really well, but we all have such layered histories. We all come from a unique background. Write about your past, write about you. Or make stuff up, but make it about something that really matters.

People can write jokes five minutes after a major world event happens, and have hundreds of thousands of people read them within 10 minutes. Whereas before you write a joke, you don't know if anybody is really touching on it or not, and you tell it onstage the next night. For joke writing it has changed things.

I'm unable to really write the kind of song that doesn't have a visual element, which most songs don't.

I write songs from the point of view I had at a time;I'm not tryingto write songs from a young person's point of view.That only ends in disaster.

I have certain moral parameters that I do not cross in writing; I don't write about adultery or kids having premarital sex.

Publishing is a business. Writing may be art, but publishing, when all is said and done, comes down to dollars.

Above all, a query letter is a sales pitch and it is the single most important page an unpublished writer will ever write. It's the first impression and will either open the door or close it. It's that important, so don't mess it up. Mine took 17 drafts and two weeks to write.

Sunday afternoon is for papers and writing.