Writing Quotes - Page 874

I'm in a business where there's complete anarchy. You can't control it - you can only react to it. The control that people traditionally had over their message is gone. Look at Wikileaks: you have to approach everything you write on the basis it's going to be on the front page of the newspaper.

Aaron Sorkin very sticky about using precise language. It's in his contract: you have to use what he writes!

Theatre was an art form that I didn't really respect, and because I wanted to shake it up and do different things on stage, I was able to combine all the things I'd learnt through writing on my own.

I think if you're writing a play, it should be its own end game; you'll never get to do a good one unless you know it's not a blueprint for a film; you're not going to get the action right and the story right.

I love actors. Part of that is my theater background and being a writer who cares about performance. Actors have usually chosen their profession because they have a dream of doing it and they want to express something about the world. That's the same thing that I have with writing. Most of the good actors get into it for those reason, rather than for reasons of fame or fortune, or anything like that, and that's where I'm coming from, as a storyteller.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts, and pray long prayers?

The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing; every one must be an author; some out of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a name, others for the sake of mere gain.

If I had to refute all the other articles of the Jewish faith, I should be obliged to write against them as much and for as long a time as they have used for inventing their lies - that is, longer than two thousand years.

Most acting today on television is like a locomotive on a track. Everybody knows what they are doing. The problem of writing today is everyone sounds the same. We speak differently. We think differently. People are different. And that's the beauty of it.

I didn't write songs for a very long time.

I don't think I ever worry too much about what our target audience is, what we should be releasing. I just write naturally and organically and try to write from the heart.

If all sentient beings in the universe disappeared, there would remain a sense in which mathematical objects and theorems would continue to exist even though there would be no one around to write or talk about them. Huge prime numbers would continue to be prime, even if no one had proved them prime.

Writing adds up to the conscience of our times.

He who commits a wrong will himself inevitably see the writing on the wall, though the world may not count him guilty.

To be accurate, write; to remember, write; to know thine own mind, write. And a written prayer is a prayer of faith, special, sure, and to be answered.

It was like passing the scene of a highway accident and being relieved to learn that nobody had been seriously injured.

You have to be an outsider to write.

Often it doesn't occur to you what kind of novel you're writing until quite late on.

You can't sort of write the novel as if you're taking dictation from heaven.

Faith is a talent, and it goes the way of all your talents. Getting old is the subtraction of your powers. Which very much goes for writing.

You never can tell, though, with suicide notes, can you? In the planetary aggregate of all life, there are many more suicide notes than there are suicides. They're like poems in that respect, suicide notes: nearly everyone tries their hand at them some time, with or without the talent. We all write them in our heads. Usually the note is the thing. You complete it, and then resume your time travel. It is the note and not the life that is cancelled out. Or the other way round. Or death. You never can tell, though, can you, with suicide notes.

Much modern prose is praised for its terseness, its scrupulous avoidance of curlicue, etcetera. But I don't feel the deeper rhythm there. I don't think these writers are being terse out of choice. I think they are being terse because it's the only way they can write.

I say the sentences again and again in my head until they sound right.

Well, my father Kingsley Amis was a writer and it seemed natural to start writing in my late teens. I think it was good that I began when I was young and bold and foolish, otherwise I'd have become too self-conscious and aware of the weight of not having written anything yet.

I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write.