Writing Quotes - Page 774

The most original thing a writer can do is write like himself. It is also his most difficult task.

Great drama, drama that may reach the alchemical level, must have dimension and its relevance will take care of itself. Writing about AIDS rather than the cocktail set, or possibly the fairy kingdom, will not guarantee importance. . . . The old comment that all periods of time are at an equal distance from eternity says much, and pondering on it will lead to alchemical theatre while relevance becomes old hat.

That is the operatic problem; the singer must keep up a big head of steam while trying to appear secretive, or seductive, or consumptive. Some ingenious composer should write an opera about a group of people who were condemned by a cruel god to scream all the time; it would be an instantaneous success, and a triumph of versimilitude.

Take a favorite trick of yours and write a 'gestures script' how could you improve clarity [using gestures].

Of what is lost, irretrievably lost, all I wish to recover is the daily availability of my writing, lines capable of grasping me by the hair and lifting me up when I'm at the end of my strength. (Significant, said the foreigner.) Odes to the human and the divine. Let my writing be like the verses of by Leopardi that Daniel Biga recited on a Nordic bridge to gird himself with courage.

Reading is more important than writing.

Dante Alighieri was not only a Christian poet or a priest, he was a man. He was a real poet. We can understand that the goal of Divine Comedy is beauty. You don't need also to understand Italian or to know Italian, because when Dante's writing, when we recite Dante out loud, it explodes a cosmos of illumination like to recite music, a symphony.

I find writing songs hard, because it does not come naturally to me. I never set out to be a songwriter or a singer.

There are a lot of composers who were fantastic, but I challenge them to write a record that you could play five times a day for two months on the radio, songs that people will want to dance to on a Saturday night.

We've all got to earn a living. And writing songs is what I do. But when I've done a record, it's not that I think it's better or worse than anyone else's, but if I think that nobody else would have done it if I hadn't, well then that's ok.

Relative to the power that movie stars have, and producers and directors, I would say that even the most respected screenwriters have very little power in Hollywood. I don't think it's in the nature of the writer's profession to go after that power. Writers spend their time alone, hallucinating, writing, making these things up, while these other people are out schmoozing, making connections, meeting each other. They are trotting the corridors of power and making sure they've put their own imprints in it. And they're promoting themselves and their images, as they should.

The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you.

You can't write about a horrible restaurant - if it's a Ma & Pa restaurant no one wants to see you kick Ma & Pa in the chops.

I do think that short story writing is often a matter of luck.

I was never able to write seriously about heroes because I was very aware that I was not one and that in my background there was not this heroic thing.

I don't finish every story, but I probably write and send out three out of five of them.

I don't want to write every week, it's too much trouble, and I shall only write when I want something. If you think I'm sick when I don't write, you can send for me to come and tell you.

Writing is not a mystery. It is a craft like any other, and it can be learned.

Theosophy occupies a central place in the history of new spiritual movements, for the writings of Blavatsky and some of her followers have had a great influence outside of her organization. … The importance of Theosophy in modern history should not be underestimated. Not only have the writings of Blavatsky and others inspired several generations of occultists, but the movement had a remarkable role in the restoration to the colonial peoples of nineteenth century Asia of their own spiritual heritage.

Anyone who can only write about themselves or their life experiences, in my mind, isn't a very good writer.

Your mind just goes to the craziest idea to lure people into the theater, and then you write your script around those elements.

Occasionally, I'll dream I'm in the factory. That will help me write. Not creatively, but more like a prod. I don't want to go back there.

What I would do is when I was younger I would draw in a sketch book something that happened in my life and then write a little something on the side about what happened or what the story.

All I've tried to do (with my writing) is capture the essence of my time.

I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.