Writing Quotes - Page 632

The things I write are for those who are willing to accept a new relationship between the reader and the author.

I've worked with genius performers. Sometimes they created great work with a bad script... but not often. Play it safe: write well.

All experience helps when you write.

I did not intend to write a funny book, at first. I did not know I was a humorist. I have never been sure about it. In the middle ages, I should probably have gone about preaching and got myself burnt or hanged.

I think nobody since has written such extraordinary work as Shakespeare writes. The characters he writes are full of inconsistencies, which is a great human quality - I mean we're all very inconsistent in the way we behave.

That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious to find out.

Why do you write?' Because I love words and stories so much. Because I would be grief stricken every day of my life if I couldn't write. Because I'm obsessed and compelled. Because I'd be utterly useless at anything else.

The rain comes down harder as I write. It sheets off the roof in torrents. I wish it would pound against me. Pound the life from my body. The flesh from my bones. The pain from my heart.

Why do I write historical fiction? Johnny Tremain, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Island of the Blue Dolphins-that's why. I'll never forget how it felt to read those books. I want to write books with the same power to transport readers into another time and place.

Improve writing skills: 1. Keep paragraphs short. 2. Use bold and CAPS to make points. 3. Start with a question or short statement. 4. Give me meat in the middle. All meat. 5. Make me smile, think, or act at the end.

That's the way I will write characters, put a fair amount of myself in them, and then everyone else who was like that person, I will pick and choose.

When it comes time to write the book itself I'll shut the lights out, picture the scene I'm about to write then close my eyes and go at it. Yes, I can touch type.

I think a lot of young aspiring writers get misdirected; they think 'I ought to write this, even though I enjoy reading that'. What you have to do is write what you enjoy reading.

My best time to write is right after coffee and breakfast - four eggs because, full disclosure: I'm really a komodo dragon - and that's because then I'm energized but not so awake that the critical voice clicks on, the voice that sometimes says, "Don't write that," or "Man, that sentence is terrible - you should give up and go pet the cats."

I hate that rule that says write about what you know, it leads to too many British novels about marriages going slightly wrong. Write about what you don't know, just act as though you do.

Yeah, I've been interested in music since I was a teenager, always writing songs.

And the reason you hate writing so much is because you start analyzing your work before you're done pouring it onto the page. Your Left-brain won't let your Right-brain do it's job ... Your Right-brain gets the words on the page. The Left-brain makes them sing.

One of the most challenging aspects of writing a memoir is finding your own voice, and you should be very careful about being influenced by someone else's voice.

reading is not a passive act. It's a creative act. It's a relationship between the writer and a person the writer will probably never meet. I think it's very wrong to write in a way that leaves no room for the reader to maneuver. I don't want to get in the way. What I'd really like to do is to perform the Indian Rope Trick - go higher and higher and eventually disappear.

The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do now know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met. If you want to find out the circumference of an oil drop, you can use lycopodium powder. That’s what I’ll find. A tub of lycopodium powder, and I will sprinkle it on to my needs and find out how large they are. Then when I meet someone I can write up the experiment and show them what they have to take on.

All of a writer that matters is in the book or books. It is idiotic to be curious about the person.

After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting.

I like writing strong women, because as a straight male, there's nothing more attractive to me than a strong girl.

Agents and publishers only want one thing - good writing.

In the earlier days I did most of the song writing by myself, and I got to a place in my life where I felt it was necessary to go outside my box and get some outside inspiration.