Writing Quotes - Page 401

Baudelaire's L'Héautontimorouménos was long seen to be a sexual sadomasochistic poem, it is now generally accepted that the poem is about writing poetry.

My poems always begin with a metaphor, but my way into the metaphor may be a word, an image, even a sound. And I rarely know the nature of the metaphor when I begin to write, but there is an attentiveness that a writer develops, a sudden alertness that is much like the feel of a fish brushing against a hook.

I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand and didn't try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have.

In the arts, in places where you're not going to save lives or save species, I think there's no reason to play ball. I can't imagine a serious poet who would want to write or perform for most recent inauguration. I'd be very surprised if there were an inaugural poem, and I can't really imagine what that would be.

I have this really beautiful Martin guitar, and it just kind of writes songs for me.

I hope that the feeling of making poetry is not confined to the people who write it down. There is no luxury like it, and I hope we all share it. ... I am sure that the great glory of poetry in one's heart does not wait on achievement.

I was inspired to write children's books, but without blood and gore.

But usually I'll wake up and start writing about nine o'clock. I'll probably write for about three hours, and I'll do that over the next month and a half.

I write in the mornings. During my down time.

Poetry today is easier to write but harder to remember.

Know what makes a sentence more than a random list, practice constructing sentences and explaining what you have done, and you will know how to make sentences forever and you will know too when what you are writing doesn't make the grade because it has degenerated into a mere pile of discrete items.

People write or speak sentences in order to produce an effect, and the success of a sentence is measured by the degree to which the desired effect has been achieved.

It may sound paradoxical, but verbal fluency is the product of many hours spent writing about nothing, just as musical fluency is the product of hours spent repeating scales.

I was still very hopeful that much work lay ahead of me. Perhaps because much of what I had worked on or thought about had not yet been put into writing, I felt I still had things in reserve. Given this optimistic nature, I feel this way even now when I am past sixty.

The only writers who have any peace are the ones who don't write. And there are some like that. They wallow in a sea of possibilities. To express a thought, you first have to limit it, and that means kill it. Every word I speak robs me of a thousand others, and every line I write means giving up another.

I've always regretted the fact that I've never formally studied and learned the mechanics of writing music.

The truth is I've been doing Kickstarter before there was Kickstarter; there was no Internet. Social Media was writing letters, making phone calls, beating the bushes.

When I'm having trouble I write by hand. There is some connection between the mind and the fingers that draws out words.

If my writing comes to a halt, I head to the shops: I find them very inspirational. And if I get into real trouble with my plot, I go out for a pizza with my husband.

One of the other reasons for writing this book [My Beloved World] was to hold on to the person you first met. More of the world knows about me now and follows me in a way that never happened before. I didn't want me, the inside of me, to change. Because I liked Sonia, the Sonia who has been. So another reason for writing the book was to hold on to that - whatever the best in Sonia was, to try to capture it.

I have ventured to write more intimately about my personal life than is customary for a member of the Supreme Court, and with that candor comes a measure of vulnerability.

I keep boxes filled with recuerdos - little memories that are in the form of pictures and events that I've written down. It's funny that I chose to write them in Spanish rather than English or Portuguese.

A man’s mind is hidden in his writings: criticism brings it to light.

I actually produced other people's vocals for a long time when I first signed my publishing deal and I had just sort of decided that I only wanted to be a writer. I would be in all of these writing sessions, and a lot of times my publisher would say, "You should get a demo singer to sing it because then it doesn't identify as a Solange song."

Dialogue is a lean language in which every word counts.