Writing Quotes - Page 991

I put my filter on, though, and I only see things people I follow [on Twitter] write now. So, I don't even know anymore [ trolls].

I made a career goals list for 2017 and it's so funny. I have low self-esteem or something, so I put both wishes and goals. The goals were things I'm going to do anyway, because I have no choice because my job is to do stand-up comedy so I have to tour and I have to write stuff. The wishes were all things that could be goals. As in, I bet people who have achieved these things called them goals at one point. But I haven't looked at that piece of paper since.

Method acting has had a major influence both in writing through the eyes of other people, and seeing through the eyes of other people, trying to address different ideas in a way that would go beyond preaching to the choir.

My writing derived from the conviction I conceived during my college years: one should lead one's life as if one were the protagonist of an epic novel, with the outcome predetermined and chapter after chapter of edifying, traumatic, and exhilarating events to be suffered through. Since the end is known in advance, one must try to experience as much as possible in the brief time allotted. Writing is a way of ensuring that you pay enough attention along the way to understand what you see.

Kristofferson was writing what was really in his heart and saying it in ways we hadn't heard up till that point.

Whenever I felt tempted to, I don’t know, watch cat videos or bad Netflix TV instead of writing this Brandeis biography, I thought of his stern but kindly visage and buckled down and wrote the damn thing, because there’s so much information out there, and these are such anxious times in democracy, such unreasonable times.

Louis Brandeis actually changes his mind about women's suffrage because he works with these brilliant women in the women's suffrage movement like Josephine Goldmark, his sister-in-law, where he writes a Brandeis brief which convinced the court to uphold maximum hour laws for women by collecting all these facts and empirical evidence.

But as I wrote the book [Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet], I tried to write it as clearly and directly and passionately as possible just thinking of communicating to readers who might want to learn about this great thinker and be inspired by him as I was.

What is so inspiring about [Louis] Brandeis's writing is he saw it as a tool for democratic education. He would say things like the opinion is now convincing, now can we make it more instructive, after he'd gone through ten drafts.

[Louis] Brandeis is writing directly to us. His clear voice comes through a century and he's speaking to us and he's galvanizing us and he's persuading us. And that's why I love to read the prose.

Why I find Louis Brandeis so exciting and inspiring because he's teaching us - good legal writing is not a matter of taste, it's a matter of connection with fellow citizens and of democratic education.

Louis Brandeis really inspired me to write this book [Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet]. It was a crazy deadline. The editor said I'd miss the hundredth anniversary unless I pumped the thing out in six months, because I'd been delaying and dilly dallying for so long. So he both inspired me to get up early and write.

Many of our students want to do what they have done and that has made them successful thus far in their lives: play by the rules, and do what is expected. But as much social science research and writing by Malcolm Gladwell, among others, make clear, the rules are mostly created by those already in power so obtaining power often entails standing out and breaking rules and social conventions.

I don't think talking about myself making songs is a very interesting topic, there are so many other more engaging things to think about and write about.

I think there's a real connection between acting and writing novels because the way I write characters has a little bit to do with the method acting that I was taught in high school and college.

If I write a character, instead of looking from the outside, like maybe a journalist would, trying to describe them physically and figuring out what kind of things they might be interested in or have in their house, I don't really do it that way. I try to feel what it would be like to be inside this person, to be them.

I remember liking to write stories pretty early on. In fourth or fifth grade, they would give us the beginning of a story, and we were supposed to finish it. I remember liking that. But I didn't think about deciding to become a writer until high school at about the age of 16.

She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.

Basically you come up with the fictional idea and you start writing that story, but then in order to write it and to make it seem real, you sometimes put your own memories in. Even if it's a character that's very different from you.

Jacques Derrida is a very important thinker and philosopher who has made serious contributions to both philosophy and literary criticism. Roland Barthes is the one I feel most affinity for, and Michel Foucault, well, his writing influenced my novel, 'Middlesex.'

The daily act of writing remains as demanding and maddening as it was before, and the pleasure you get from writing - rare but profound - remains at the true heart of the enterprise. On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching.

I was aware that you weren't supposed to write about suburbia, that it was undignified in some way, the subject matter not momentous enough. And so, for a long time, that kept me from writing about it. But once I began, I realized it was just as interesting as anywhere else.

They're just memories now. Time to write them off.

Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be.

I'm not really an autobiographical writer, though I use lots of stuff from my life to make my stories seem real. But when I actually write about myself, I get very confused.