Writing Quotes - Page 360

I always run into these Ph.D.s. They write and write and write about sustainable development. Then these guys ask me, 'But, how do you do it?' They are scared to death to do anything.

Writings scatter to the winds blank checks in an insane charge. And were they not such flying leaves, there would be no purloined letters.

In Algeria, I had begun to get into literature and philosophy. I dreamed of writing-and already models were instructing the dream, a certain language governed it.

When I'm writing flawed characters, I just think about my own flaws.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

I write about real people in disguise. If anything, my characters are toned down-the truth is much more bizarre.

Some people consider the way Shakespeare was writing about Ophelia as erotomania-that she was delusional in thinking that Hamlet was in love with her. But I don't think so.

I keep a guitar around while writing and will improvise music. I do this for several reasons, such as that it's fun, and sometimes it helps me with the meter.

There's not too much difference between writing a picture book and writing a collection of a hundred poems or so, except that the bigger books take a lot longer to do.

The sound of a word is at least as important as the meaning.

I write from a people's point of view. I love people because I understand them. I understand an enemy, I understand a friend, I understand grey areas, and I understand black areas.

If you dont [sic] say what you want, what's the sense of writing?

It gives me great pleasure, a good name. I always in writing start with a name. Give me a name and it produces a story, not the other way about normally.

Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

You should write a book," Ron told Hermione as he cut up his potatoes, "translating mad things girls do so boys can understand them.

In truth, I never consider the audience for whom I'm writing. I just write what I want to write.

Read as much as you possibly can. Nothing will help you as much as reading.

Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements.

If I don't write, I begin to feel unsettled and uneasy, as I gather people do who are not allowed to dream.

Depending upon shock tactics is easy, whereas writing a good play is difficult. Pubic hair is no substitute for wit.

All cities are geological; you cannot take three steps without encountering ghosts bearing all the prestige of their legends. We move within a closed landscape whose landmarks constantly draw us toward the past. Certain shifting angles, certain receding perspectives, allow us to glimpse original conceptions of space, but this vision remains fragmentary. It must be sought in the magical locales of fairy tales and surrealist writings: castles, endless walls, little forgotten bars, mammoth caverns, casino mirrors.

Writing always means hiding something in such a way that it then is discovered.

Multicultural is not a description of a category of American writing-it is a definition of all American writing.

The first few months of my life of every year are in total retreat. I don't see anybody except my husband and my dog, I don't talk to anybody, and I just write.