Writing Quotes - Page 511

I guess what I'm looking for here is empathy. So you [Nicholas Kristof] have traveled all around the world, famously to the worse places of the world. Darfur. Mogadishu, Ouagadougou. Probably those places much more than Modesto or Lewiston.I never read a column by you that suggest the people in those places, who support dictators oftentimes, are racists or bad people. You would never write that about a poor person in the third world but you are implying that about your fellow Americans.

Technically I feel total fluidity in writing. I feel there's nothing technically that I can't do the way a certain sort of pianist feels that. But that doesn't mean it comes easily. It doesn't.

It's a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them.

I always love writing the third book in a series because you get to tie up all the threads that you put out in the first two books. You finally let people know what really happens and reveal all the secrets and bring certain characters together.

I definitely shut down sometimes. I always just go into my own little cocoon and write, and I surround myself with as much music as possible. The last girlfriend I had, when we broke up, I remember being in a room for days on days on days with my music cranked up, playing songs like Kanye's '808's & Heartbreak.' That playlist just was long!

At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.

I tell beginning readers to read a lot and write a lot. If you want to write a book, find a subject that's really worth the time and effort you'll put in.

It's a myth that older writers can't write for younger audiences. Shakespeare wasn't 15 when he wrote Romeo and Juliet.

I try to write 1,000 words a day - about three pages. When I reach 1,000 words I feel good. Less than that: a failure. More than that: tired.

I often write either really early in the morning, or really late at night.

I need to write down my observations. Even the tiniest ones; they're the most important.

I don't write political plays in the sense that I'm writing essays that are kind of disguised as plays. I would really defy anyone to watch any of my plays and say 'Well, here's the point.'

I love reading; it's a great way to avoid writing.

I find writing very difficult. It's hard and it hurts sometimes, and it's scary because of the fear of failure and the very unpleasant feeling that you may have reached the limit of your abilities.

Usually I try to be there by six. Everything has been taken off the walls so that there's nothing to arrest my sight. On the bed I have Roget's Thesaurus, a dictionary, a Bible, and a deck of playing cards.

I think being an editor really helped me take other people's notes on my writing. I'd get a note like 'It's too wet' or 'The first couple chapters are good, but then the rest of the pages were so wet that they were completely illegible' or 'Did you dip this in Sprite? This smells like Sprite. Why would you dip your novel in Sprite?' And instead of pushing back, I'd listen. That's an incredibly important skill for a young writer to have.

The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know. And I said they don't know nothing. Imagine something. Do you know what it's like to be a Madame in Paris, when you're too old to have any clients. No, you don't. I don't either. Write about it.

If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.

Write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.

I like writing melody without an instrument. It's just so - it's more like the choreography of a bee; you just go.

Bland writing - timid, antiseptic, vanilla writing - is nearly as unhealthy as the brutal and dark. Instead of sipping, say, elixir, nectar, tequila, or champagne, the reader is invited to slurp lumpy milk or choke on the author's dust bunnies.

I started writing when I was 5 years old. I would dictate stories to my mother, and she would copy them in a scrapbook. If she changed anything to make it, in her opinion, better, I would throw a tantrum.

Always compare yourself to the best. Even if you never measure up, it can't help but make you better.

Whenever I set out in a new direction, whether it's with a new band or being a frontman or writing a comic book or entering into movie scoring or anything like that, I wouldn’t say that I do it fearlessly...

Things are much more complicated. Feminism versus pornography, for example. There are a lot of feminists who think it is bad, but others think it's good. I have become, you might call it mature - I would call it senile - and I can see both sides. But you can't write a satirical song with 'but on the other hand' in it, or 'however'. It's got to be one-sided.