Writing Quotes - Page 588

Most writers' view of the New West is either phony - obsessed with the same tired mythology - or it's obsessed with anti-mythology, ... There's not a lot of realistic, observant writing about the West right now.

In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.

My little notebooks were beginnings - they were the ground into which I dropped the seed... I would work in this way when I was out in the crowds, then put the stuff together at home.

My rule has been, so far as I could have any rule (I could have no cast-iron rule) - my rule has been, to write what I have to say the best way I can - then lay it aside - taking it up again after some time and reading it afresh - the mind new to it. If there's no jar in the new reading, well and good - that's sufficient for me.

I grew up in a household of women, they ran the show, they kept it all together. I credit my ability to write in female voices, as well as male, with having grown up with older sisters in a neighborhood largely populated by girls.

Fiction writing is a strange business when you think about it. You sit down and weave a network of lies to explore deeper truths.

A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have.

It is almost impossible to write fiction about the Mormons, for the reason that Mormon institutions and Mormon society are so peculiar that they call for constant explanation.

I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.

Newton took no exercise, indulged in no amusements, and worked incessantly, often spending eighteen or nineteen hours out of the twenty-four in writing.

Most people write a lot of autobiography, but when I came to write autobiography I discovered that nothing interesting had ever happened to me. So I had to take the situation and invent stories to go with it.

Other people get into occupations by accident or design; but writers are born. I could work at selling motels, or slopping hogs, for fifty years, but if someone asked my occupation, I'd say writer, even if I'd never sold a word. Writers write. Other people talk.

The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.

I do not begin my novel at the beginning, I do not reach chapter three before I reach chapter four, I do not go dutifully from one page to the next, in consecutive order; no, I pick out a bit here and a bit there, till I have filled all the gaps on paper. This is why I like writing my stories and novels on index cards, numbering them later when the whole set is complete. Every card is rewritten many times.

It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.

Making music has been connected to one of my greatest heartaches, because my own music has never quite connected with audiences. But it was this heartache that pushed me to explore other artistic avenues, like writing and filmmaking, and I ultimately feel most at home in a multidisciplinary environment.

however many resolutions one makes, one's pen, like water, always finds its own level, and one can't write in any way other than one's own.

Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.

We grew up in abject poverty. Acting, writing scripts and skits were a way of escaping our environment at a very young age.

Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing.

I have a little piece of advice for all the single guys out there, this is a piece of gold so please write this down. If you have the opportunity to star in a movie, do it. Seriously, I find it's a lot easier to meet girls.

I have a lot of friends, in and out of golf, and there is a mutual trust. I'm very serious at the course. Maybe if I joked around more around the press tent, your image of me would be different. But that's not me. And the golf course is my office. If I come up to you when you're writing a story, are you going to drop everything to talk? Or are you going to say you're too busy doing your job?

I feel like I give myself all day long to other people and other things, and I still seem like I have something to write once in awhile. Not often, though.

My life in general, orderly or not, it allows me more freedom in my own writing. Sometimes I wonder, though - I have friends that sit around and just write all day. And I think it's the coolest thing.

I like to write about love plus an obstacle. Not a really big obstacle; not too serious and not too funny. Just somewhere nicely in between - a combination of the two.