Writing Quotes - Page 565

About four years ago I made a list, for my own amusement, of the playwrights, the contemporary playwrights, by whom critics said I'd been influenced. I listed twenty-five. It included five playwrights whose work I didn't know, so I read these five playwrights and indeed now I suppose I can say I have been influenced by them. The problem is that the people who write these articles find the inevitable similarities of people writing in the same generation, in the same century, and on the same planet, and they put them together in a group.

How long does it take to write a good book? All of the years that you've lived.

Some people write to please, to soothe, to console. Others to provoke, to challenge, to exasperate and infuriate. I've always found the second approach the more pleasing.

My son writes songs and plays. He sings like an angel.

I write to escape ... to escape poverty.

Instead of writing songs for girls, I tend to write albums, which I guess is a bit weird.

Jay Abraham's client sent him $50,000 a month for a long time for writing one headline. That's what people who understand communication can do.

I love going to the movies and being moved emotionally. I like my work, singing and writing in my journal.

In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner.

I have always found writing pleasant and don't understand what people mean by 'throes of creation.'

Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.

The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up.

Templeton was down there now, rummaging around. When he returned to the barn, he carried in his mouth an advertisement he had torn from a crumpled magazine. How's this?" he asked, showing the ad to Charlotte. It says 'Crunchy.' 'Crunchy' would be a good word to write in your web." Just the wrong idea," replied Charlotte. "Couldn't be worse. We don't want Zuckerman to think Wilbur is crunchy. He might start thinking about crisp, crunchy bacon and tasty ham. That would put ideas into his head. We must advertise Wilbur's noble qualities, not his tastiness.

Don't write about Man; write about a man.

Advice to young writers wo want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man, write about a man.

Write about it by day and dream about it by night.

Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.

Writing is not an exercise in excision, it's a journey into sound.

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

Writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too.

You know, people sometimes say to me, 'Do you prefer to do this or that, act or do stand-up or write' but the thing that I enjoy most is the difference between all of them, because you're always learning. I don't go around thinking of myself as a great anything. I'm actually lucky to have the chance to fail at all of them.

To me, you couldn't write a character like J. Edgar Hoover and have it be believable. I mean, he was a crock pot of eccentricities. We couldn't even fit all his eccentricities into [ the same named] movie.

I write in order to express what the photo itself cannot say. A photograph of my father doesn't tell me what I thought of him, which for me is much more important than what the man looked like.

It's not just about acting. I love film, I'm a director now, I love writing, I love producing, I love having a company that makes films and to be prolific and have a place to put all the ideas that are constantly bubbling up inside of me and that don't let me sleep at night.

I have always been writing but when I started rapping I was just playing around. My friends told me I needed a rap name like Breezy or G-Eazy so I went with Dreezy.