Writing Quotes - Page 568

It was a roller-coaster process. For a long time I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn't writing with an outline. And, rare for me, I wrote scenes out of sequence. . . . I didn't understand the play when I wrote it. It was something I'd give in to. It happens to me periodically. I give over and write whatever comes to me and I don't know what it means and then I do. It's thrilling.

Claude Hopkins.. maintained that nobody with a college education could write an advertisement addressed to the mass millions. That's absolute poppycock.

When I teach writing, I have a mantra: Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.

According to Adams, Jefferson proposed that he, Adams, do the writing [pf the Declaration of Independence], but that he declined, telling Jefferson he must do it. Why?" Jefferson asked, as Adams would recount. Reasons enough," Adams said. What can be your reasons?" Reason first: you are a Virginian and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second: I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third: You can write ten times better than I can.

I want to write for history, not for the moment.

Only assholes write plays about Nazis.

I'm a playwright by trade, and in theater, writers have complete control over everything. Nobody can change a word without your permission. I've had a couple screenwriting experiences that weren't terrible, but they were typical, where executives came in and gave you sometimes good notes and sometimes horrible notes - but they wanted to change the movie that everybody had agreed to make. After a couple of times, it's like, "Why are we doing this?" The story is not going to turn out very good when 13 people are writing it together.

I want to write my life. I want to be able to write my life. You are a second away from saying it. You have no idea how much I love you.

Having reached a point in which I was so bitter and exhausted from being a quote unquote public figure, I wanted to return to a more childlike relationship to writing.

Verse comedy is interesting to me because of the challenge of writing in rhymed couplets, which is not a form that's usually amenable to English, yet to me it gives great possibility for comedy.

Learning to write for the theatre is learning to be a human being, because the theatre by its very nature makes you deal with other human beings.

Maybe I will write a memoir, perhaps I'll do some essays, or maybe I will write a mystery story.

I was able to sit at Lincoln's side and see how he thought and how he acted, and how he felt about what was going on around him. I felt the pressures that were on him. You can see what people were writing to him, how they were nudging him.

All men have talents. Some build, some paint, some write, some fight. For me it is different.

In the broadest possible sense, writing well means to communicate clearly and interestingly and in a way that feels alive to the reader. Where there’s some kind of relationship between the writer and the reader - even though it’s mediated by a kind of text - there’s an electricity about it.

I wasn't all that attracted to writing originally. I read a great deal. My parents read a great deal. I do know that as my interest in tennis waned, my interest in academics increased. I mean, I started doing my homework in high school and discovering that it was somewhat fun. And then in college I barely even played on the team because just classes were much more interesting.

Start early and work hard. A writer's apprenticeship usually involves writing a million words (which are then discarded) before he's almost ready to begin. That takes a while.

There are people who are really great musicians. I've met a lot of them. And I'm not a great musician. I'm adequate enough to be able to throw some chords together and write songs, but I can only feel that because I'm expressing something honestly, or in a heartfelt way, or in some way that's not bullshit, that in some way the songs have merit.

The fact is that all the recording science and technology in the world is no substitute for a good song or for real feeling. Music is about feeling and if there isn't any genuine feeling, if the song isn't about anything that anyone gives a damn about, there's nothing you can do. All the technique that exists won't make it any good; it'll just make it technological. All the production values you add won't do anything except make it glossy.

The easiest way to get laid by a girl, or get rid of her, is to write a song about her.

But when you're writing a script - for me anyway - you have to sort of create an enforced innocence. You have to divest yourself of worrying about a lot of stuff like what movies are hot, what movies are not hot, what the budget of this movie might be.

All romances end in tragedy. One of the key people in a romance becomes a monster sooner or later.

Songwriting as an art is a bit archaic now. Just writing a song is not good enough.

I don't like to read things that people write about me. I'd rather read what kids have to say about me, because it's not their profession to do that.

I think, in a weird way, the reason I was drawn to screenwriting and the reason I really love doing it is because I love writing dialogue.