Writing Quotes - Page 754

Every credible scientist on earth says your products harm the environment. I recommend paying weasels to write articles casting doubt on the data. Then eat the wrong kind of foods and hope you die before the earth does.

Reporters are faced with the daily choice of painstakingly researching stories or writing whatever people tell them. Both approaches pay the same.

Few things in life are less efficient than a group of people trying to write a sentence. The advantage of this method is that you end up with something for which you will not be personally blamed.

I'm an improviser at heart, when I'm writing, I'm improvising in my head. When you're an improviser on stage, you can never be precious about anything, you can't control what anyone else is going to do. The best stuff comes out of moments of inspiration that spontaneously happen.

I just like to write stuff that makes people laugh, stuff that works, a fun movie that everyone can enjoy. I'm not really worried about the packaging, marketing, and what the studios are going to run next.

Once I was in college, I was actually trying to write a comedy screenplay and I wrote basically the worst movie ever and just threw it away and never showed anybody. Everyone needs to get that first bad screenplay out of your system before you start writing other stuff.

One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes.

One of the paradoxes of writing is that when you write non-fiction everyone tries to prove that it's wrong, and when you publish fiction, everyone tries to see the truth in it.

You have Cameron Crowe write an incredible monologue for you just based on the things that you're talking about. It just became this opportunity that was too exciting a process to pass up.

I don't know necessarily that I would produce under my own company right now. Producing is not something that I'm thinking about. Directing is something that I will be doing very shortly, trying to figure out what to get my hands on. And I can't imagine writing a script and wanting to direct it and not having a producing credit, because I would want to have a big chunk of power on that end, if I wrote something.

I used to give her [my wife] to read the column every week before I sent it to the editors. And sometimes she was so mad - are you crazy? You're not going to send that, or, you're not going to write that about me. So I would go, OK. You have five hours. Go ahead, write the column yourself.

I very much hope that when my wife reads my writings so she reads it as if she is a character and not the real one. Sometimes she takes it too personally.

I think everything has its place. So if the ideas or the fluidity isn't coming in writing, maybe it's related to ingestions.

A writer is a reader moved to emulation.

Lists help us manage the chaos of our lives—to impose order, if only for a moment. Writing a list clears the mind. … Once everything is written down, it’s easier to see which tasks are important and in what order to tackle them. Tasks that seem overwhelming look easier when reduced to mere lines on paper.

There are different reasons why people write: for themselves, or for other writers, or to get prizes, or keeping an audience in mind. In my case, it felt really nice that a certain type of readership read the book and liked it, even though my readership is not as wide as certain popular books.

It's not my intention to be understood. I will continue writing for a readership that is fundamentally local. Because if you want to produce universal writing, you run the risk of losing your local knowledge. Your views are so universalist that the street aspect disappears.

As far as the writing goes, I started telling stories as soon as I could talk, and started writing them down as soon as I could string words together.

Read like mad. But try to do it analytically - which can be hard, because the better and more compelling a novel is, the less conscious you will be of its devices. It's worth trying to figure those devices out, however: they might come in useful in your own work.

All I can do is write about whatever grabs me.

I feel like I partly came to writing through being in college during the start of the Iraq war, and knowing that those issues mattered lot to me, and wanting to go see for myself.

I always knew I wanted to write, but I didn't know that I would want to do investigative reporting - in part because it seemed so ill-suited for my personality, or I thought it was ill-suited for my personality, insofar as I'm not very aggressive, and I'm not confrontational.

It's been nice, actually, to keep in touch with a lot of the people and families that I've written about. Like with the kids I was just writing about from Guatemala, who survived being kidnapped and fleeing violence, it was nice to just sit down in their living room and play bingo with them, go to dinner with the family. And sometimes not thinking about it in such a mechanistic "I am now coming to report and get what I need" way, but just spending time, helps you see a more natural version of who they are too.

If I have to write by a certain time, I can pull through, but usually I just let stuff happen, hanging out with comic friends - or bringing a basic idea on stage and seeing if it goes anywhere.

My readers are 90 percent gay, and it's who I write for. I am not here to entertain straight people.