Writing Quotes - Page 489

The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author's that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.

Don't ever write a novel unless it hurts like a hot turd coming out.

That was the trouble with being a writer, that was the main trouble—leisure time, excessive leisure time. You had to wait around for the buildup until you could write and while you were waiting you went crazy, and while you were going crazy you drank and the more you drank the crazier you got.

bad writing's like bad women: there's just not much you can do about it

There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i.e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men - many men - unfortunately aren't anything.

I write right off the typer. I call it my "machinegun." I hit it hard, usually late at night while drinking wine and listening to classical music on the radio and smoking mangalore ganesh beedies.

If you can't write the next line, well, you're dead. The past doesn't matter.

People just don't know how to write down a simple easy line. It's difficult for them; it's like trying to keep a hard-on while drowning - not many can do it.

All the fantasy writers I know have a way of dwelling on their own fears and phobias. A writer spends his life being his own psychiatrist.

When I was 21, I got into a motorcycle accident while traveling in Europe and I had to lie around a lot in the aftermath, which was really the first time in my life that I became really focused and inspired to write.

I think the hardest part of writing is revising. And by that I mean the following: A novelist has to create the piece of marble and then chip away to find the figure in it.

It's more difficult to write a song about having your heart ripped out of your chest while you're in love. Because it lacks honesty. And the honesty comes through in the music, it really does.

Writing humor is not something every single person can do.

I won't write my autobiography because I never had an affair with Frank Sinatra, and if I had had, I wouldn't tell anyone.

Being a reporter is one of the noblest things you can do in life. Letting the people know. It's really a holy cause. Time after time after time, in the middle of corruption and disgrace and bad politics, I've seen people come through and do for people. I write about someone in trouble and someone else rallies to help them. Through reporting, things can change.

I am very active on Twitter and one thing that keeps popping up is "How do I balance having a kid and writing?" And I know it should not be as aggravating, but I know no one ever asks a male writer that. Or, any male that.

I would never tell myself, you have to write 20 pages today or something. But I do try to show up. Read what I wrote, fix things.

The preservation of the Jew was certainly not casual. He has endured through the power of a certain ideal, based on the recognition of a Higher Power in human affairs. Time after time in his history, moreover, he has been saved from disaster in a manner, which cannot be described excepting as 'providential.' The author has deliberately attempted to write this book in a secular spirit; he does not think that his readers can fail to see in it, on every page, a higher immanence

So, once I get writing I really try and put five to eight hours a day in my room with a guitar to really try and come up with stuff that feels interesting enough to me to keep it.

My mother had always taught me to write about my feelings instead of sharing really personal things with others, so I spent many evenings writing in my diary, eating everything in the kitchen and waiting for Mr. Wrong to call.

I'm lucky; people write scripts for me.

Those who say they would write a book if only they had time will never become authors.

When I decided to stop using quotation marks, it presented technical challenges: you have to conceive of dialogue differently and structure it differently for this to work. So I had a new problem, which makes writing interesting again.

It takes a certain kind of mind to narrate, to work through character motivation, to be unforgiving to one's writer-self when it comes down to creating the minutiae of detail. Writing fiction requires stamina, a sense of how people's lives work, how people work toward and against one another and, above all, precision.

Clary screamed out loud as he fell like a stone- And landed lightly on his feet just in front of her. Clary stared with her mouth open as he rose up out of a shallow crouch and grinned at her. "If I made a joke about just dropping in," he said, "would you write me off as a cliché?