Writing Quotes - Page 550

Our good time is sitting in a coffee shop with a newspaper, writing a line on the back of a napkin. That is the most fun comedians ever have

To vest a few fallible men — prosecutors, judges, jurors — with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J. S. Mill called a "moral police," is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products. If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do likewise to a work of genius.

Column writing is like gas - it fills the available space.

Throughout my childhood, my parents dropped me off at a multitude of therapists' offices in hopes that I'd avoid growing up to be the kind of asshole who writes books about them. Also because it was sometimes easier than finding a nanny.

When I write stuff that's provocative, I want people to think about that, too. I'm in between a pop musician and an artist in that way. I want people to be part of the music as they listen, but I also want them to think: What was that?

I moved to New York in the 1970s and started writing when I was at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

If you wish for something hard enough, the fairy tales teach us, you can get it in the end. But it's hardly ever the way you thought it would be, and the endings aren't always happy ones.

I had a problem with cops pulling me over all the time for speeding. When I was doing Hill Street Blues, the cops said how much they loved the show as they were writing me up; meanwhile my insurance went through the roof.

Brilliant, inspiring . . . if you are on a pursuit of self-mastery, make time to read this!

A sense of that kind of narrative movement that we experience online could have been in my mind easily, though not consciously. I do rely so much on my unconscious, the way I write my stuff the way I do. I let my unconscious work. I have better ideas that way and more interesting work.

I didn't really start writing music or lyrics or turning them into songs until I went to San Francisco.

But maybe the Charm Bracelets understood more about life than I did. From an early age they knew what little value the world placed in books, and so didn't waste their time with them. Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing, I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar.

Street skating, which is what I grew up with, is completely free of rules. You can do anything. When I see a skater go by, I think, What is this person going to do here? It's the same with people who write, who make music, who draw, who make movies. Creative people tend to have all of those different avenues in them.

Our audience holds us to an incredibly high standard of continuity and emotional authenticity. We don't toy with that, but oftentimes we write stories, in order to spark debate. We're very determined to always give the answer. We don't want to leave a lot of things open to debate, at the end of the day.

Dyan Favre, Brett's nephew, is also a gem. Not just a favorite person from the book - a favorite person, period. I actually wound up writing this about him. Simply a good, righteous man.

Give me good writing, and I'll play it all day.

Here's the first major lesson: Writing is not an activity. It's not something you sit down at the keyboard, and just start doing. That's called 'typing.' Typing is an activity ... Writing is a process. And if you start thinking of it as a process, life gets so much easier.

I've tried to become a singer with the guitar and not let any technological licks run my life. Just write the licks and play them as best as I can as a part rather than ad libbing.

Writing code? That's the easy part. Getting your application in the hands of users, and creating applications that people actually want to use - now that's the hard stuff.

All I did was write it down, one word after the other, beginning and ending with the same one, Bombay.

I go on writing so that I will always have something to read.

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.

Never write on a subject without first having read yourself full on it; and never read on a subject till you have thought yourself hungry on it.

I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true.

Eloquence may be found in conversations and in all kinds of writings; it is rarely found when looked for, and sometimes discovered where it is least expected.