Writing Quotes - Page 570

Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy, one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English literature, to give up forever the writing of fiction. Criticism drove Thomas Chatterton, the English poet, to suicide. . . . Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.

When I was at McGill medical school, there was a writer, Ted Rosenthal, who used to write for the New York Times - tragically he died of leukemia at a very young age. He talked about how we can have an opportunity to live a lifetime in a moment, in a day, in a month, in a year - when you're confronted with the finite reality of your own existence, all these moments become lifetimes.

One writes what one lives, even if not in a literal way. Someone who has gone through an unhappy love tends to describe unhappy loves, even if they have nothing to do with their own.

The New Testament writers I think conceive of their inspired Scripture writings as flushing out, bringing to articulation, expounding and so on the climactic revelation in the son, but this in self-conscious fulfillment of the promises and covenants that were already made to God's chosen people in Old Testament times.

Young writers if they are to mature require a period of between three and seven years in which to live down their promise. Promise is like the mediaeval hangman who after settling the noose, pushed his victim off the platform and jumped on his back, his weight acting a drop while his jockeying arms prevented the unfortunate from loosening the rope. When he judged him dead he dropped to the ground.

For me, books are music for my mind and my imagination. When I am stuck in something I'm writing, I simply read my way out of being stuck. You can never waste time reading.

My boarding school experience was the only thing I had strong enough feelings to write about for hundreds and hundreds of pages. I can still smell the formaldehyde of the fetal pigs in biology.

I just think that people are complicated, both men and women. It happens that I write more about women.

We really had the whole piece laid out in like a Word file, just from beginning to end. It was kind of more like your creative-writing class in school. You know, you have the outline and then you just kind of plug the stuff in the little map you've made.

Springsteen on that record started writing less about having your wind in your hair and turning the radio up and more about being dragged down by adult things. Regular people trying to get ahead. A little less mythical and romantic, and more real. It's a really spectacular record for that reason.

Sometimes things reveal themselves to you a little bit. I think it was Joan Didion that said, "We write to find out what we're thinking." And sometimes that happens.

Here in California, we passed a law against texting while driving. But there's no law preventing you from writing a letter while driving.

The Greek word pseudepigrapha is a Greek word meaning 'falsely superscribed,' or what we moderns might call writing under a pen name. The classification, 'OT Pseudepigrapha,' is a label that scholars have given to these writings.

You need to write on your own and produce your own life.

It's part of a cycle of stories I'm writing where I deconstruct classic science fiction.

I moved to Des Moines when I was 15. I asked my mother to give up costody and sign parental rights over to my grandmother, who I lived with while I went to school. I was clean and finally starting to figure myself out. I can only say that now without laughing. I was still very out of my own place, and I didn't even know what that place was. All I knew was that I could write music, that I had no idea what that could mean and that I was still surrounded by people I couldn't relate to. I hadn't found my tribe yet.

I write very personal songs. Subject matter is usually derived from some internal struggle that I am having.

Writing cannot express all words, words cannot encompass all ideas.

[writing to Stirling in 1740] ... an unlucky accident happened to some of the French mathematicians in Peru. It seems that they were shewing French gallantry to the natives' wives, who have murdered their servants destroyed their instruments and burnt their papers, the Gentlemen escaping narrowly themselves. What an ugly article this will make in a journal.

I do like writing songs in a band. When it's rock, it's such a different kind of dynamic, obviously.

I try to make sure that, when I'm writing, I don't put too much Cody in it. But I don't want to lose it either.

It's just lovely to be involved in a movie that does go back to the basics - characters and great writing.

Casting a film is to me one of the most important things next to the writing. If you cast it properly everything takes place very easily. If you cast it improperly you're fighting an uphill battle.

It starts with the writing. We have to think of all these characters - we have to treat them all equally. We have to think of them as having an interior life and having motivations. When I'm drawing female characters, I'm looking for that. I'm looking for subtext. I'm looking for ways to make the reader relate to them in a way that goes beyond the pure aesthetic value. You know, just drawing an attractive woman really gets kind of boring after a while.

Year after year after year, people write books about managing innovation or about leadership, for example, without ever going through the pain of saying, "This kind of leadership will cause this result in these circumstances and a very different result in those circumstances." This is academic malpractice of the worst kind.