Writing Quotes - Page 541

I never sit down to write. When I'm moved, I do it. I just wait for it to come. You just hear it. I can't really describe writing. It's in my head.

A lot of people don't listen to the lyrics, really.

No one touches me when I write my story, unless I hire you to or I allow you to.

I think the first trick to writing a feminist work is to write plenty of women. That way you get to write characters, instead of worrying about paradigms.

And for me, I think of the group as one in which there's always this pendulum swinging back and forth between writing shorter, more concise pieces until we get kind of sick of it and then writing pieces that get more sprawling and experimental and explore in different directions.

We'd like to just write nothing but lyric poetry. The trouble is, the individual is going along intent on his own personal gratifications and love affairs and financial affairs and everything else. But loping alongside him is this fascist lout who keeps trying to take over. And if you keep ignoring him, he gets bigger and bigger, so every once in a while the free individual has to turn away from his private pursuits and give this fascist lout a few clouts, and beat him down to size.

Good prose almost always requires both showing and telling, scenes and summary, the two basic components of creative prose.

The good thing about writing a true story is that you don't have to worry about giving an impression of realism.

I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship.

I've told youngsters not to write their autobiographical novel at the age of twenty-one; to save it for the time when they're fifty-one or sixty-one. They should write other novels first, to learn their craft; they shouldn't cut their teeth on the valuable material of childhood because they'll never have better material, ever, to work with.

The FBI wants Apple to write software code to help it break into the iPhone. Apple doesn't want to say this. Andrew Crocker, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF, a digital civil rights group, says the government can't make you say what you don't believe. He looks to a Supreme Court case that began in New Hampshire.

My songs are very personal, which means they are fantastically therapeutic to write, but performing them night after night is emotionally draining.

I've been very fortunate at having good titles but I just think in terms of titles. I'm doing a workshop now where people write books and they come and I name their books for them. I'm good with titles.

Many days I don't write any code at all, and some days I spend all day writing code.

I know I stand visibly onstage, but my function is still unseen, because I rarely see the immediate results of what I am saying or doing or writing.

Good acting is all in the writing. If it isn't on the page, then it really won't make any difference. You cannot act on force of personality alone.

In the life of a real writer, nothing is ever lost, no word you write is a waste of your time or energy.

I got a bit obsessed with the whole English language and was writing journals and poetry. I've always been intrigued about psychology and philosophy and how people's minds work.

I don't really care about how good a song is, I only want them to reflect what I felt when I was writing them

A lot of the time when I write about the person that I love, I feel like I'm writing about New York.

I was very young, maybe five. The opera was very... I was attracted to opera to the point that I think it's the reason I started to write music for films. I never studied. There are film and music school that teach you how to write music. I never studied that. But the influence of opera, which is a combination of storyline, visuals, staging, plus music... that was perhaps the best school I could have had. That's what gave me the idea of coming to Hollywood to write music for films.

When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children.

There's definitely some pieces in there that reflect on my personal life, but really, they aren't as personal as everybody thinks they are. I would like them to be more personal. The emotions, the songs themselves are personal. I can't do it - I've tried to write personally and it just doesn't seem to work. It would be too obvious. Some things that you could read in could fit into anyone's life that had any amount of pain at all. It's pretty cliche'.

I started studying acting, got commercials, and here we are 100 years later. I'm acting and writing and I have a pool and a dog.

Before the Olympics, there's always been a part of me that's wanted to write a book about Women's cycling because there isn't one out there and I think there's a lot to be said.