Writing Quotes - Page 727

It's quite difficult to write about photography as a photographer. A lot of better photographers than me have declined to do it.

It always seems to me that one of the saddest things about the death of a literary man is the fact that the breaking-up of his collection of books almost invariably follows; the building up of a good library, the work of a lifetime, has been so much labour lost, so far as future generations are concerned. Talent, yes, and genius too, are displayed not only in writing books but also in buying them, and it is a pity that the ruthless hammer of the auctioneer should render so much energy and skill fruitless.

Just write what you love and what a movie you'd like to see.

I have been writing now for over a week. I find it cleansing, refreshing; it is good for me.” (p.531)

If you make your living writing, and you can't write anything, it's over. It's very frightening.

It's never easy to write a song. It's the most difficult thing I do.

I've been writing for decades that balance is an inapt metaphor as it necessarily entails tradeoffs.

I don't go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it's contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.

She's blonde with all the hits. Taylor Swift. She's hot. More than that, she's beyond talented. I have to write a song with her.

The main thing you worry about is just coming up with songs at all. I don't sit down and write stuff like certain writers do. They think about what they are going to write first and then they write it. I just get what comes in at me. It's like I'm a musician and if I can keep my mitt on, I can catch the balls that come at me.

I'm not in a race with anybody to make the biggest hit movie anymore. I am just trying to tell stories that I can stay interested in for the two years it takes me to supervise the writing and to direct them.

I've found through experience that I'm only good when I'm writing something that, in essence, only I could write. The times I've written for hire, for other people, I don't think I've done very well.

I thought about how to film something, how to take pictures of it and how to mix it all together. And I was getting that through Patti [Smith] - because she takes pictures, performs, writes; she does so many things, and that was a big inspiration to me. It helped me realized that I'm not just a fashion photographer. I wanted to do all these other artistic things as well, and during filming my mind opened up to those possibilities.

Writing a first novel takes so much effort, with such little promise of result or reward, that it must necessarily be a labour of love bordering on madness.

The great thing about writing about the ancient Spartans or Athenians is that so much knowledge is no longer extant that no one, except maybe a Cambridge or Oxford don, can call you out and prove you wrong.

I am going to write my symphony; I'm just going to start tomorrow.

A writer writes with his genius; an artist paints with hers; everyone who creates operates from this sacramental center.

Someone once asked Somerset Maughham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.

Late at night have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be? Are you a writer who doesn't write, a painter who doesn't paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.

It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.

I teach classes 28 weeks of the year, but the rest of the time I do research and write books.

I like ice hockey. No one is ever going to ask me to write about that as a metaphor for life.

From my vantage point, when I'm criticized in a way that I can hear what's being said - i.e., the issues - I'm more likely to listen and respond. A lot of the personal email I receive consists of name calling; I'll write back and say: Talk to me like I'm a person and you're a person and tell me where you disagree with me. I can't tell you how that turns people upside down. More often than not they write back with an apology and a reasoned argument.

The solo years have been more meaningful to the audiences than the Smiths years, but the press in England only write about me in relation to the Smiths era.

It doesn't stop. It really doesn't stop. It's the way I live every single day. I don't do anything else. I have no other interest other than music. At all.