Writing Quotes - Page 786

In order to write novels for a living - it's not pathological, but I do think and worry and brood and fidget about stuff that I'm working on.

And I think that in myself (and perhaps evident in what I write) fear of loss and the corresponding instinct to protect myself against loss are potent forces.

Happiness for me is getting to write about the most important things I know.

I didn't feel up to writing about 9/11. If I were to write about it, it would take me years.

I play piano and guitar and I do write my own stuff so to a certain extent I know what I want to do in regards to music. But I'm still finding out what kind of music is my favourite kind to listen to, never mind do myself so I've got a lot of time to find out myself and develop myself as an artist.

The fallacy is that you have to hold some sort of stake in the grief or horror in order to write about it - I think the opposite is true.

I think it's common sense to shy away from the erotic. Perhaps this grand experiment, which started with Lady Chatterley's Lover, of seeing what you can write and how you can write about sex, has reached a certain weary terminus with Fifty Shades of Grey.

You have to attempt to find new forms that will force you to write freshly and better and hopefully more truthfully.

I had some bad jobs when I was young. Writing is not one of them. If you're fortunate enough to reach my age, to still be writing, you have to be grateful, and I am. I've been lucky. For many years, all I've done is writing, and it's all I've ever wanted to do.

I think writing should be about change.

Writing reminds you that you're never alone. Writing and reading is to be optimistic.

There are some singer-songwriters who start out as poets. So someone like Leonard Cohen wrote and published poetry in the early 60s, but then started writing songs. Bob Dylan's a poet in the sense of bard, aoidos or vates.

If a poet writes to save his soul, he may save the soul of others.

Writing a computer virus program is child's play. Any fool can do it, which is why the silly little twerps who do have nothing to be proud of.

Science is wonderful, science is important, and so are children, so are young people, and so what could be better than to write a science book for young people?

I think Douglas [Adams] is writing with an eye to irony for adults at the same time as entertaining children.

Nowadays theologians aren't quite so straightforward as Paley. They don't point to complex living mechanisms and say that they are self-evidently designed by a creator, just like a watch. But there is a tendency to point to them and say 'It is impossible to believe' that such complexity, or such perfection, could have evolved by natural selection. Whenever I read such a remark, I always feel like writing 'Speak for yourself' in the margin.

I have no problem selling books to media franchises and we do it all the time. The author must understand that he/she is a writer for hire and has no control over copyright or over editorial changes made to the text.

As an editor, I must often tell writers that their stories "do not fit our present needs." But there are times when I want to reply: "Sir, I would not trust you to write a ransom note."

I believe that the harm which Mill has done to the world by the passage in his book on Political Economy in which he favours the principle of Protection in young communities, has outweighed all the good which may have been caused by his other writings.

"The best is oftentimes the enemy of the good;" and without claiming for an instant that title of good for my book, I do not doubt that many a good book has remained unwritten, or, perhaps, being written, has remained unpublished, because there floated before the mind's eye of the author, or possible author, the ideal of a better or a best, which has put him out of all conceit with his good.

I had no plans to be an entrepreneur. I just wanted to be a journalist and write for a magazine. At 15, I just decided to leave school and launch a national student magazine.

Mostly you write to find out what you have to say.

When you reach a place where you feel blocked, lower your standards and keep on going. There is no possible way to do permanent damage to a piece of writing. You cannot ruin it. You can only make it a little better a little at a time.

There are two tests that we [writers] have for all of our writing: So What? and Who Cares? There is an answer to both. The answer to Who Cares is that a reader cares, if the writing is good. The answer to So What is that these ideas give us completely new understanding, change our sense of who we [people] are and why we're here [on this planet].