Writing Quotes - Page 508

In writing, you must kill all your darlings.

Most students of nature sooner or later pass through a process of writing off a large percentage of their supposed capital of knowledge as a merely illusory asset. As we trace more accurately certain familiar sequences of phenomena we begin to realize how closely these sequences, or laws , as we call them, are hemmed round by still other laws of which we can form no notion. With myself this writing off of illusory assets has gone rather far and the cobweb of supposed knowledge has been pinched (as some one has phrased) into a particularly small pill.

Songwriting is one thing that I have blessed to myself. It's a very personal thing for me, the business is very shared and you're constantly around people. So it just kinda happens when it happens and I write when I want to write and that's the way it's going to be or else I wouldn't even be doing this.

Songs come when they wanna come and I'll work at it when I feel like working at it. There are some songwriters that write every day, and I'm definitely not one of those guys. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just kind of what I do.

But the thing that stands eternally in the way of really good writing is always one: the virtual impossibility of lifting to the imagination those things which lie under the direct scrutiny of the senses, close to the nose. It is this difficulty that sets a value upon all works of art and makes them a necessity. The senses witnessing what is immediately before them in detail see a finality which they cling to in despair, not knowing which way to turn. Thus this so-called natural or scientific array becomes fixed, the walking devil of modern life.

For those that love the world serve it in action, Grow rich, popular, and full of influence; And should they paint or write still is it action, The struggle of the fly in marmalade.

Writing a great song is not a simple task, but I feel like when everything comes together and you sing it in a certain way that no-one else can sing it, when it's written in a certain way that's perfect for the way that you're performing it, that those are the things that make a song great.

Not like Homer would I write, Not like Dante if I might, Not like Shakespeare at his best, Not like Goethe or the rest, Like myself, however small, Like myself, or not at all.

We all rely on technology to communicate, to survive, to do our banking, to shop, to get informed, but none of us knows how to read and write the code.

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft.

You shouldn't say anything mean about people who can't read. You should write it instead.

I explained to Amazon that I don't like outlining or projecting what something's going to be. I like to allow a story to arise as I'm writing scripts. I find it horrible when I try to think of something for the plot without really being on the ground and seeing where it goes. I was really resistant to do the mini-bible. So I gave them something, but I really didn't want to do it that way.

I just love to play rock and roll. I love to write songs all the time about what's up on these streets. I write songs about people getting killed; I write songs about people getting beaten up; I write songsabout people getting taken to jail by the police; and I also write songs about love and happiness.

Military metaphors are rarely exact, but sending Republicans against Democrats when the issue hangs in the balance is nearly always as futile as sending George B. McClellan against Robert E. Lee, the Italians against Marshal Montgomery's desert rats or an Arab armored division against an Israeli rifle company. The copy desk can write the headline before the battle begins and take the rest of the night off.

I'm writing a film called 'Bug.' It's an original script, and it's not about killer insects. It's a thriller set in a high school. The bug of the title refers to a surveillance device.

It's weird to try to write lyrics for somebody else. They can't really get behind what you're saying or what you want them to say because they didn't experience it.

You want to have the experience. As far as the creative side, the more I do this, the more I know that it's all about the writing. You got on a film sometimes and it's sort of half-written, and they expect and think that the actor's job is to bring the extra part and the good part. It's not. We're good at saying what other people have written, but for the majority of it, that's about it, comedians aside. It's all in the writing. Whether that's dialogue or character, or whatever, it doesn't matter. As long as they've done something special, than you can do something special.

There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature.

I usually base my characters on composites of people I know. One trumpet player in SIDE MAN is really a mix of four different guys I knew growing up. Patsy , the waitress, is a mix of about three different people. I like doing it that way. I start with the characters, as opposed to plot, location, or some visual element. I write more by ear than by eye. I always work on the different sound of each character, trying to make sure each has a specific voice and speech pattern, which some writers could care less about.

My neck and shoulders are killing me. Hard to focus on writing about murder, doom, shagging, our hopeless future & other comedy etc etc.

Woman's faith and woman's trust, Write the characters in dust.

Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound.

How long it takes to write a book depends on its length.

I get a great high from writing.

I think of a child's mind as a blank book. During the first years of his life, much will be written on the pages. The quality of that writing will affect his life profoundly.