Writing Quotes - Page 668

A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of his land.

Offhand, the only North American writers I can think of who have come from a background of rural poverty and gone on to write about it have been Negroes.

You know, I became a director out of necessity. I was writing comedies, and I couldn't find anybody to deliver it correctly.

On the one occasion where I did try writing a screenplay, I found the rewriting just unendurable.

I have always loved magic realism as a form of writing. I have also been fascinated for a long time with the intersection of science and religion.

Every essay - the subject matter of every essay - is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.

You write a lot of books; you hope you get better.

I write what I call 'novels of consolation' for people who are bright and sophisticated.

It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days.

I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.

In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.

Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.

It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.

Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.

I don't consider myself an artist necessarily, but craftsmen or people in the arts, their spiritualism is sort of when you're writing well or performing well or doing whatever you do well, there's an element of that that's either God-given, a talent that you're not necessarily responsible for.

Now, if, as I think, writing should be, it's a kind of risky trade.

There will come a day when you will be stronger and you will forget that person that just broke your heart. It's very hard to do that, but that's why you surround yourself with good people. Or write a song!

Not getting bored of my own story and/or character is one of the main struggles I have had with novel writing, and I have put to bed big chunks of work that just didn't sustain my interest.

It seems the best work I do is when I am really allowing the unconscious to rule the page and then later I can go back and hack around and make sense of things.

God did not write a book and send it by messenger to be read at a distance by unaided minds. He spoke a Book and lives in His spoken words, constantly speaking His words and causing the power of them to persist across the years.

One thing that's paramount in my life is that I am alone. I'm a loner. And yet I have many friends and I don't feel lonely. And I even like my own company. But when I'm alone, it's to read or write. I'm in my thoughts. Mostly I'm learning.

In old days the public didn't really mind much about accuracy, but nowadays readers take it upon themselves to write to authors on every possible occasion, pointing out flaws.

I am in total silence when I write - I don't even like the sound of the dryer going - I like the quiet.

My music is very raw, it's emotional, and it's honest. I do my best to tell a story whenever I write music because I want to paint the most vivid picture that tells a story whether a person is falling in love for the first time or going through a painful heartbreak.

I'm just writing love songs. I'm not trying to be pop. I'm not trying to be jazz. I'm not trying to be anything. I'm just writing love songs. And everyone loves a love song.