Writing Quotes - Page 641

Writing is like bricklaying; you put down one word after another. Sometimes the wall goes up straight and true and sometimes it doesn't and you have to push it down and start again, but you don't stop; it's your trade.

Rabbi Kushner writes from a wealth of Jewish wisdom and pastoral devotion, but his theology is, I find, is wholly in keeping with contemporary Christian thought. So far as there is an answer to the conflict between the goodness of God and the bitterness of suffering, this is it

It is only with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement that you begin to see different examinations of not only Reconstruction but slavery itself, and there is a lesson to be drawn here about how the times influence the writing of history, something that we should never forget.

[Cultural relativism] licenses the envy of the untalented, giving rise to what has been called the revenge of failure: Those who cannot paint destroy the canons of painting; those who cannot write reject canonical literature.

My son had toyed with the idea of writing and trying to write a little bit, so that kind of gave me the bug to write also.

My theory for nonfiction is that nobody can be free of some kind of conceptions about whatever story they're writing. But if you can find a way to build those into the story, then the story becomes a process of deconstructing and heightening and sometimes changing those notions and that makes dramatic tension. The initial statement of your position, and then letting reality act on you to change it, is pretty good storytelling.

My general approach to writing fiction is that you try to have as few conceptual notions as possible and you just respond to the energy that the story is making rather than having a big over plan. I think if you have a big over plan, the danger is that you might just take your plan and then you bore everybody. I always joke that it's like going on a date with index cards. You know, at 7:30 p.m. I should ask about her mother. You keep all the control to yourself but you are kind of insulting to the other person.

I do play all the characters, when I write them, one after another. If they actually had to film me, the only one I could play would be Samwell Tarly or Hot Pie.

I should write a book. I've always wanted to write a book. I should write a book about kids who see dead people.

I've been approached many times by many different people, and most people want to do something that I write and produce, and I'm just not into that.

Tell me your Dreams and I'll write you a Fantasy. Tell me your Fantasies and I'll paint you a Dream for the minds eye you can get lost in!

I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

Letter-writing I imagine is counted as 'work' from which you must abstain, and I scribble this letter simply from the self-satisfied notion that you will like to hear from me. You see, I have asked no questions, which are the torture-screws of correspondence. Hence you have nothing to answer.

I do not know what I think until I write it.

To write brashly about some things, it is almost necessary not to know much about them.

When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?

You can then further enhance the process of writing by forming the clear intention that your Higher Self will influence your writing.

Do not start a story unless you have an ending in mind. You can change the story's ending if you wish, but you should always have a destination.

You run into people who want to write poetry who don't want to read anything in the tradition. That's like wanting to be a builder but not finding out what different kinds of wood you use.

Usually, with a novel, you start with no idea what to do because your job is to create convincing characters and then they just run around getting crazy. The problem with writing a memoir, obviously, is you can't do that because you sort of know what's going to happen. Because you're the character.

Asthmatic immigrant learns to breathe by writing.

The only way to write about right now is to write about the future.

I always say it took me 10 minutes to write 'Cars,' but if I am honest it could have been even less than that - and it has been a really successful song over the years. It is still massively used, in advertising, in films, and people do cover versions of it a lot.

It's always performing for me. I write and I record so I can perform. It all ties to that. I've done it since I was a little kid. That's my absolute rush, is playing for different people every night, bringing something else to the table they've never seen.

To be a writer, you must be a reader, yet as many as 30 per cent of my writing students were not readers.