Writing Quotes - Page 829

I used to think that if I had a choice between writing well and living well, I would choose the former. But now I think that's sheer lunacy. Writing weighs so much less, in the great cosmic equation, than living.

It is impossible to distrust one's writing without awakening a deeper distrust in oneself.

Getting a book published made me feel a little bit sad... I felt driven by the need to write a book, rather than the need to write. I needed to figure out what was important to me as a writer.

No, I don't harbor any mystical ideas about writing, Your Honor, it's work like any other kind of craft; the power of literature, I've always thought, lies in how willful the act of making it is.

At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I'd end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat empty.

That powers my desire to write: the sense of how quickly everything on the surface of life can be cut away and you can suddenly be inside the most inner part of the most inner life of a person. What does it feel like there, and what are the regrets and sensations and longings, and what is the music of it?

If the book is a mystery to its author as she's writing, inevitably it's going to be a mystery to the reader as he or she reads it.

What interests me in writing a novel is taking really remote voices, characters, and stories and beginning to create some kind of web.

I hear people talk in my head and I write it down. I choose where they live and how they dress to be real. That person wouldn't wear that. That person wouldn't say that. She can't afford to live like that. All that bullshit that so many movies have in them. I don't want to see that.

I thought of the scene while writing scenes with Rebecca [Hall] and wrote it like an opening montage of showing where someone works. If you see a film about a car mechanic, you'd show the place they work and what they do. So, that's what I set out to do with Rebecca's character. I thought it probably wouldn't even make it into film but I ended up liking it.

I think I'm a good writer. I think I have my own voice, which is unique to everyone, everyone has their own voice; if they would just write from a vulnerable embarrassing place, it's going to be universal and it's going to be entertaining. Because everyone is the same and everyone is unique.

If you want to be an artist, you have to know that art is an ongoing practice, that you're part of a long line. Take this test: if someone offered you a billion dollars, but you could never draw another illustration or write another word, would you take it? If you reject it, you need to find another way to pay the bills, but you're still an artist.

A lot of young artists in particular think you can just do one great thing and then sit back and collect checks. Most artists, even people like Dan Clowes, who's one of my heroes, don't just do comics. He does paid illustration. He writes screenplays, and so forth, working and selling lots of different things.

To write, you must first belong to yourself.

I went to college in North Carolina, and that's how I learned how to play music. I learned how to play guitar when I was 12, and I was always in bands, but the first time I ever started writing my own music was being surrounded by a lot of songwriter friends in North Carolina.

When you are going through something that heavy, for me anyway, I couldn't imagine writing about anything else. I always tend to write about what's most prevalent in my mind.

Forty-years-old these days is the beginning of people's lives. I've found myself, I'm confident, I'm mature, I've been through some stuff, I'm ready to write my book.

When my parents realized that what I liked was fashion, they gave me good advice. I remember my father telling me that I should try to do an internship. They never said, "This is a world we don't know; it might be something strange," or "That is not serious," or things like that. They always said, "Try. We'll help you. We'll send drawings to people if you want. We'll write letters for you." What I'm very thankful for is they never made me think that something was impossible. They were really, really supportive. They are still.

No one who cannot limit himself has ever been able to write.

He who cannot limit himself will never know how to write.

Punctuation is a fabulous tool for controlling your reader - you even get to control where they breathe. That's what I call power!

I want to write about grown-up things.

One of the things I enjoy most about writing historical romance is researching inspiring backgrounds and settings.

I get told I'm too good-looking for a lot of roles. They don't write roles people would think I'm supposed to play as often as they used to - the rom-com pretty-boy storylines.

I've learned so much from just being in film industry. I definitely want to stay in front of the camera and learn more from as many people as I can. Somewhere down the line, writing, directing and producing would be fantastic.