Writing Quotes - Page 452

If a book has a predictable storyline or familiar situations, there's little satisfaction for me in writing it. A woman deciding which man she'll spend her life with? I've read that story a million times, but a stepmother deciding which of her children she'll save in a freak accident? Now that's a challenge.

There's constant drama, and I'm busy, busy, but at the center of the madness is the desire to write, the need to write. That desire, that need, is as palpable and relentless as any junkie's craving, and will possess me all day until I can park myself in a chair and do my work.

All you ever really want is a great character and great writing. As an actor, that's the juiciest sandwich you could ever ask for.

If there's an article about sexual assault, if there's a video about feminism on YouTube, you're going to get the most horrible, disgusting comments ever. And sometimes the comments are pornographic, and sometimes the comments are really harassing. So I think that it's kind of a difficult place for women to write sometimes.

The minute viewers callin or write about your looks, they were not listening to what you were saying.

the whole point of muck-raking, apart from all the jokes, is to try to do something about what you've been writing about. You may not be able to change the world but at least you can embarrass the guilty.

I don't know what issues concerning identity have helped contemporary fiction evolve to what it is now. All I know is that the range of voices that are being heard and published is a lot more diverse than when I was coming up.

In real life, people are constantly saying one thing and doing another, but if you write your characters that way, the story becomes too hard to follow.

It's a fact, the majority of films in Hollywood are from the male perspective. And the female characters, very rarely do they get to speak to another female character in a movie, and when they do it's usually about a guy, not anything else. So they're very male-centric, Hollywood films, in general. So I think it's incredible that Ned Benson, when I said I'd love to know where she goes, says okay, I'm going to write another film from the female perspective.

Good actors never use the script unless it's amazing writing. All the good actors I've worked with, they all say whatever they want to say.

Also, if nothing else, writing this book has really changed the way I experience bookstores. I have a whole different appreciation for the amount of work packed into even the slimmest volume on the shelves.

I don't really know how to do much else besides write.

I need - and occasionally love - to write for the same reasons I always did: hard as writing is, it's generally easier than life.

Writer's block is a phony, made up, BS excuse for not doing your work.

I wrote an article on a new Porsche for 'Automobile Magazine.' I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I'm more proud of that than anything.

Not to say people shouldn't get rich from art. I adore the alchemy wherein artists who cast a complex spell make rich people give them their money. (Just writing it makes me cackle.) But too many artists have been making money without magic.

I think my voice worked out fine, but it was a lot of work for me. And I was very self-conscious about it. I was a bit self-conscious about writing lyrics too.

My other advice is to start writing songs and singing right away.

I think enthusiasm is the answer to passionate writing.

You know the Greeks didn't write obituaries. They only asked one question after a man died: "Did he have passion?"

I could've written songs about, for example, the Paris attacks as they happened and have the song out the day after, but doing this project and following the news made me realize how much I miss deeper nuances in the news reporting. There's already so many quick opinions and angles being thrown in your face, so I avoided writing about things like that and tried focusing on the smaller, more seemingly insignificant things. The things you would find in the back of the newspaper or the back of your mind.

Good writing and dark wit always excite me and they come together thrillingly in this book. It has a quiet grip on the strangeness of the interior and exterior worlds of love and politics. I delighted in the writing and the scope.

When we hold onto the negative in ourselves it comes with endless guilt. We hold onto a lifetime of floating visions and regrets about what we should have done or should have become. Conscience recognizes wrong and tries to atone. But guilt turns into resentment. Conscience brings us closer to each other; guilt drives us apart. Create a new feeling. Every time guilt settles in your stomach, write "I forgive" on a piece of paper. Send it up the chimney, tear it up and flush it, put it in the garbage. Don't eat it.

I don't want to work with anyone who has not sat down with me and has gotten to know me. I don't want you writing for who you think Jennifer is or the public persona of because that's not who I am. It's my shell, it's the brand, it's the celebrity, but it's not the person.

I haven't had writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly.