Writing Quotes - Page 978

To reach the highest level you have to not just have a dream and focus but you also have to make sure you are writing great songs, and if you feel they're what you want to represent you, that is key. But getting out on the road is key. And get your music out there. Maybe something catches, maybe it gets picked up and used on television, you just never know.

Discovery still happens in the writing. You start in nonfiction with a whole lot more going for you, because all the discovery isn't waiting to be made. You've made some of it in the research. As you get deeper into a piece and do more research, the notes are in the direction of the piece - you're actually writing it.

There must be times when everybody writes when they feel they're evading writing.

If you want to understand what you're thinking, you kind of have to work it through and write it. And the only way to work it through, for me, is to write it.

Writing is always a way, for me, of coming to some sort of understanding that I can't reach otherwise.It forces you to think. It forces you to work the thing through. Nothing comes to us out of the blue, very easily.

You think you have some stable talent which will show no matter what you're writing, and if it doesn't seem to be getting across to the audience once, you can't imagine that moment when it suddenly will.

I can't imagine writing if I didn't have a reader. Any more than an actor can imagine acting without an audience.

I myself love to read those Victorian novels which go on and on, and you don't read them in one sitting. You might read one over the course of a summer, but that isn't what I want to write.

Sometimes an actor performs a character, but sometimes an actor just performs. With writing, I don't think it's performing a character, really, if the character you're performing is yourself. I don't see that as playing a role. It's just appearing in public.

It's hard to find a book that's safe to write. Because one always goes to dark or difficult places.

It occurs to me as I write that this "white light," usually presented dippily (evidence of afterlife, higher power), is in fact precisely consistent with the oxygen deficit that occurs as blood flow to the brain decreases. "Everything went white," those whose blood pressure has dropped say of the instant before they faint.

Writing is the act of saying "I," of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying "listen to me, see it my way, change your mind."

On the whole, I don't want to think too much about why I write what I write. If I know what I'm doing ... I can't do it.

I was thinking about what I wanted to write next, after my first novel, and had decided that I wanted to write a story with a lot of strong female characters in it.

I can't think of anything I would rather not - rather do than get up and not do anything. I have to do something. Whether it is painting, writing, acting, shopping, going to the gym, being with friends, going out - I just am a very active person. I have a lot of friends and I travel a lot.

I'd hear a tune in my head and the words would come. And then, very suddenly it just stopped. It seemed too stilted to try and learn how to write a song, to go to round robins and to learn things from other people on how to write a song. So I just stopped and did other things.

Writing music is just something that I was born to do.

When I was younger I was obsessed with writing, so even if I wanted to listen, I didnt have time.

So, the combination of looking at lots of different people and how they react to each other and how they relate to each other and waiting for that inspiration is the thing that allows me to keep writing.

Writing is all about self-editing; it's all about being present being aware of what's happening

I really recommend that anyone who wants to write have a very physical hobby that takes you away from books and criticism, because it teaches you, it informs you, and it changes your writing.

Thanks to the success of Henning Mankell and Peter Hoeg, there wasn't the same stigma attached to writing genre thrillers in Scandinavia as there was in many other cultures. Quite the opposite, in fact.

All my friends who wanted to write had got nowhere trying to write the great European novel. So I deliberately steered clear of that and set out to write something story-led.

The only pressure I feel is to write good books. And to not replicate the previous book. Whether you have a thousand readers or a million readers it doesn't change the pressure. I never feel tempted to give the reader what I think the reader wants.

Ever since I was in my teens I had plans at one point in my life to write a novel.