Writing Quotes - Page 899

I think Shakespeare got drunk after he finished King Lear. That he had a ball writing it.

I'm writing about what's happening to me now. I mean, I had a hip replacement a couple of years ago. I have a song about that. And why wouldn't you? It strikes me that that was a huge event. It's kind of funny and horrible and interesting, so why wouldn't one write about that?

I love failure. It's stuff that I'm thinking about all the time in my life, so it would make sense to me anyway to write about it.

I had a hip replacement a couple of years ago. I have a song about that. And why wouldn't you? It strikes me that that was a huge event. It's kind of funny and horrible and interesting, so why wouldn't one write about that?

You just do the best you can. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to get worse the more you do it. It can get better, I think... aspects of it, anyway. I mean, I don't write as much as I used to. But I don't do a lot of things as much as I used to. So that's the natural order of things, too. You're more or less living in the present. You're just trying to get that next song, whatever it is. And not think too much about what happened on the last record, or the record you made 20 years ago, because those are over with. Those are done.

Right away, I knew I didn't want to have that look of other guys with long hair and bell-bottom pants, because everybody else had that look. I kind of adopted my boarding-school look, which made me stand out. Then the next thing you know, the first song on my first record is a song called "School Days." It's about going to the boarding school I went to. So then I just started to write about myself. The very first song I ever wrote was about a guy I met in a boatyard that we were working in. So I've always had this thing about sticking to more or less what I knew.

My feeling is that, and I've been writing about my family over the years, although it might make them feel uncomfortable, people generally like to be written about. If I've written a song about the family, they enjoy being mentioned in the songs. Nobody's confronted me and said 'don't write any songs about me.

I've been writing about growing old for some time, really from the beginning of my career. It's something I'm apparently hung up about and now that I am old, hopefully I speak about it with some authority.

I don't like the word rock opera, but I'm trying to write on that level that's reserved for plays still, or novels.

For a while, I felt a little self-impelled to write Lou Reed Kind of songs. I should have understood that a Lou Reed song was anything I wanted to write about.

People didn't know certain things about me, which... I was out of creative writing class in school, Syracuse University; had a B.A. in English and wanted to write the great American novel but I also loved rock and roll. I was in bar bands all through college, playing fraternities and have to know all the songs in the top 10. That kind of thing.

I mean, there are peripheral things I do, I do photography, I write plays, I have books published, but that's neither here not there.

Music is an amazing thing. I don't know if we really think about it the same way we consider a painting an amazing thing. I mean, a painting is, in quotes, imaginary. There is nothing on the canvas when you start; and writing a song, there is nothing there when you start.

I write whatever shows up. That's good enough for me. I'm part of the first generation that wants to still do original material and not tour around as an oldies act.

The whole process of music for me is something absolutely honest and really naked and bare, so I never forced myself to write in French.

I'm horrified most of the time. I wish it was more complicated, but at the same time, each time I try to complicate it I hate it because I hate the idea of writing to impress.

I always lived with guitarists. When they would leave, I would just pick up their acoustic guitars and start doing finger picking and write.

I'm in my father's car at age 9 or 10 crying to Leonard Cohen's 'Famous Blue Raincoat,' thinking that you could write nearly a love letter to a man who betrayed you by having an affair with your wife. I was thinking how wonderful and pure music can be for explaining situations.

The more you’re writing absolutely honestly, and absolutely bare of intention - even if it feels absolutely personal and small because it’s at your own scale - other people relate to it much more.

I like writing music that I think is beautiful, but perfection isn't really beautiful to me.

Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say. Or even if there is such a thing as a thing to say. Limit these thoughts to no more than ten minutes a day; like sit-ups, they can make you thin

Perhaps one would be wise when young even to avoid thinking of oneself as a writer - for there's something a little stopped and satisfied, too healthy, in that. Better to think of writing, of what one does as an activity, rather than an identity - to write, I write; we write; to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun; to keep working at the thing, at all hours, in all places, so that your life does not become a pose, a pornography of wishing.

Sometimes I ask myself if writing novels is even respectable.

To me, writing is much freer than dancing. With writing, you could do it whenever you wanted. You didnt have to do little exercises and stay in shape. You could have great moments of inspiration that advanced the story. In dance, unless youre going to choreograph things yourself, youre at the service of someone else.

Most things good for writing are bad for life.