Writing Quotes - Page 759

My Spanish is a daughter's Spanish. I write, but my Spanish really is very limited.

Each book gets harder, each book gets harder and harder. I always feel like crying when I have to write.

I don't really think our government at heart wants peace. So I urge you, write to Mrs. Laura Bush, because she reads.

When I have a writing workshop, I like to have people that are anthropologists and people who are poking around in other fields, I like to have them all in the same workshop, and not worry about genre. I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet. Or the comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations.

That's all you have to ask from yourself writing a book. That it's the best you can do and that you did it without any ego involved and that you did it for somebody else. That's the best you can do.

Something I always tell students is, when you're writing something, you want to write the first draft and you want it to come out easily in the beginning. If you're afraid to say what you really have to say, you stammer. [...] You're judging yourself, you know, thinking about your listener. You're not thinking about what you're saying. And that same thing happens when you write.

You meditate and then you can put on your pajamas, or you can imagine you're wearing your pajamas, and you talk about your piece of writing in the language you would use if you were wearing your pajamas and you were seated at a table with your very good friend. And you wouldn't have to get all dressed up or clean up the table.

I don't think I'll write a large novel again because it was like being in jail for me. Even though that's the funniest book I've ever written, it was the saddest period of my life.

The ideal for me is to mix it up. When I have a writing workshop, I like to have people that are anthropologists and people who are poking around in other fields, I like to have them all in the same workshop, and not worry about genre.

I remember I was very taken with a book called DreamTigers by [Jorge Luis] Borges. He was at the University of Texas, Austin, and they collected some of his writings and put them in a little collection. It's called DreamTigers in English, but it doesn't exist in Spanish. It's a little sampler. But that collection in English is what struck me, because in there he has his poems, and I was a poet as well as a fiction writer.

I want to write an essay called "Fear of Mexico," because I always feel like Mexico's this lover that never writes to me.

The comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations.

I don't want to blame anybody, but I just want to tell you that the process of writing is antisocial, so on the days that you have something really important to write, go from lying down directly to your notepad or your computer. Do not talk.

You have to remember that writing itself is so solitary. You start writing because you're lonely.

[Writing is like fishing]. You don't bow because you made the fish. That's the difference. If you know that, then you bow for your labor.You crafted, you worked, you put in those hours so that you could catch that fish. But you didn't make that fish. You just caught the fish. That will help you stay humble and bow for the right reason and be very lucid about the work you do.

If you're going to write about the river, you've got to get in.

I got away from comedy because it wasn't being done in the way that I loved and the way that I could do it. It made me sad because I felt like it wasn't appreciated and no one was writing it so, 'I'll abandon it.

I came to write after several mini careers. I did live theatre, managed a cosmetics store and was a local television personality.

I made straight A's and never got into any trouble, and I still impose those standards on myself. So writing is my chance to escape and become the sleaziest, scummiest role.

You can only write by putting words on a paper one at a time.

The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.

Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium. Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are, the more necessary it is to be plain.

The faults of great authors are generally excellences carried to an excess.

Except under rare circumstances, I don't write responses to criticism.

A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.