Writing Quotes - Page 474

I can write orchestrations, but I can't sight-read music and play at the same time. I don't have enough facility.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's really a stupid thing to want to do.

I mean, in some cases with libel laws, you know, they can write things about people who have no course of action, because they can't afford to take legal action against them.

I try to leave out the parts readers skip.

Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue... I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated" and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.

After 58 years you'd think writing would get easier. It doesn't. If you're lucky, you become harder to please. That's all right, it's still a pleasure.

A pen connects you to the paper. It definitely matters.

I have fun writing. I don't make it a chore. I don't have to struggle with it.

I focus on characters as individuals with attitudes and write each scene from a particular character's point of view. That way, even narrative passages take on the character's sound. I don't want the reader to be aware of me, writing.

So if somebody writes a song that appears to have some meaning then everybody thinks that it's a really heavy song.

Quitters don't win and winners don't quit.

That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.

Even when I'm in quite a happy state of mind, I like writing really sad songs. I think a lot of people do.

By the time I got writing 'Halcyon,' I was on a roll, and I realized I had so much to write about, I realized I had so much built up inside that I couldn't really alleviate before, and then all of a sudden it was like reservoir burst.

You should constantly write because your writing is always evolving and progressing. It's really important to start writing young.

To be in a position, at my age, where I am financially independent, I can help develop things, I can promote stuff that I believe in, I can say no a lot and spend time writing - that is a gift.

How often I have tried to tell writing students that the first thing a writer must do is love the reader and wish the reader well. The writer must trust the reader to be at least as intelligent as he is. Only in such well wishing and trust, only when the writer feels he is writing a letter to a good friend, only then will the magic happen.

Friends will write me letters. They run out of room on the front of the letter. They write 'over' on the bottom of the letter. Like I'm that much of a moron. Like I need that there. Because if it wasn't there, I'd get to the bottom of the page: 'And so Kathy and I went shopping and we--' That's the craziest thing! I don't know why she would just end it that way.

So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialized, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: This did happen to me. It was that bad. It was the fault & responsibility of the adult. I was—and am—innocent.” The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis

Poetry is the most intimate of all writing. I want to speak first from me to myself and then from me to you.

When I write I simply follow my heart. And my flights of fantasy. It is not done with a conscious effort. I'm continually inspired and write reflexively.

It is normal for me to wake and find myself writing in the dark... or to be out of my tomb, caught in an unearthly world, alive with the images that haunt me.

I was a bartender for a long time, so I know how to make drinks, but I'm more likely to offer them than to have them. I think this is one of the reasons why I get to live longer than my great-grandmother did, and why I get to produce more writing than she did, and why my marriage isn't in dire straits.

Returning to writing fiction after 13 years away from it. Returning to the rootstock of my whole life as a writer. It's what I had wanted to be for my entire life, since I can remember, since my particular time immemorial. It's how I got my start as a writer.

When it seemed like I was going to really have to be there at Todd's [Willingham] execution, I don't think I could have done it. I think I began to distance myself. I didn't visit as often; I didn't write as often. This was kind of after my conversation with [fire science expert] Gerald Hurst. And the [car] accident made sure that I didn't have to go up there. But I think he and I both shared that.