Writing Quotes - Page 367

I paint the way some people write their autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages of my journal, and as such they are valid.

O God, the creature knows not to what end Thou hast made Him; teach him, and write in the depths of his soul that the clay must suffer itself to be shaped at the will of the potter.

I'm a little skeptical of so-called narco fiction, I have to say, though some writers I admire may have written some narco fiction. You feel the dread and the atmosphere in Yuri Herrera's extraordinary novels, but you'd never say that what he writes is narco fiction. The same goes for Martin Solares's novels, inspired by the nightmare city of Tampico, where he's from. Valeria Luiselli, Álvaro Enrigue, I know that they're deeply affected by what goes on in Mexico, but their wonderful writing points in another direction, though not necessarily always and only.

I wanted to be a film student again, as a man in my 60s. To go someplace alone and see what you can cook up, with non-existent budgets. I didn't want to be surrounded by comforts and colleagues, which you have when when you're a big time director. I wanted to write personal works.

Like seeing a photograph of yourself as a child, encountering handwriting that you know was once yours but that now seems only dimly familiar can inspire a confrontation with the mystery of time.

All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. It's much more relaxing to actually write.

Not writing is probably the most exhausting profession I've ever encountered.

He wouldn't write a letter because he couldn't without beginning it 'Dear Sylvia' and ending it 'Yours sincerely' or 'truly' or 'affectionately.' He's that sort of precise imbecile. I tell you he's so formal he can't do without all the conventions there are and so truthful he can't use half of them.

Music really does just boil down to basically, essentially songwriting chords and melodies.

What's so crazy is when you give interviews to reporters that don't really care too much for you, basically what they're going to do is write what they want to write and discredit you. They're going to write and say what they want to say, no matter what you tell them.

A cardinal rule of writing is never interrupt yourself to explain something. If you must bring up an obscure topic, drop informative hints about it as you go along so that you don't end up with the entire explanation all in one place. This keeps you from skidding to a stop and sounding teacherish. Otherwise it's better to omit the obscure topic altogether, or as mothers might put it: if you can't say it interestingly, don't say it at all.

When we look at a good deal of serious modern fiction, and particularly Southern fiction, we find this quality about it that is generally described, in a pejorative sense, as grotesque. Of course, I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.... Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

I have enough energy to write with and as that is all I have any business doing anyhow, I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing.

First you write down your goal; your second job is to break down your goal into a series of steps, beginning with steps which are absurdly easy.

I would love to write the story of my upbringing in Ireland.

The number of lines of code a programmer can write in a fixed period of time is the same independent of the language used.

writing is the loneliest job in the world. There's always that frustrating chasm to bridge between the concept and the writing of it. We're a harassed tribe, we writers.

If I am unhappy, I can write "damn it" in my personal diary, but I can't do that on a microblog so I might as well not start one.

I don't have time to sit up and write songs all day. Maybe one day when my kids get older.

The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say.

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

The natural object is always the adequate symbol.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

We trusted the writers and showrunners [in Westworlds] so much because they're so brilliant and the writing's so incredible. It really was like playing Marco Polo, where you just kind of followed their voice and they would lead you to water.

The secret of successful writing lies in striking the right keys on the typewriter.