Someone Quotes

Somehow you can tell the difference when a song is written just to get on the radio and when what someone does is their whole life. That comes through in Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Willie Nelson. There is no separating their life from their music.

I have had the unfortunate experience of having someone write an unauthorised biography of me. Half of it is lies and the other half is badly written. My feeling is that if I'm going to write my life story, I ought to have my life first.

I think some period drama can be quite alienating, but 'Downton' isn't. This is going to sound quite, um, pretentious, but someone said that it's like a soap written by a poet.

He asked my girlfriend if we could come over and sing some of the songs that we had written, which we did. After he heard the songs, he said that he knew someone in the record business by the name of Bob Shad.

The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

My job is writing. I get paid to do it. When was the last time you heard someone challenge a doctor for making money off of cancer?

If I remember correctly, a writer is someone who wants to convey information. Language or writing is a code.

I don't really read as much as I used to. A lot of what I was looking for as an escape I find in writing. And the other thing is that I don't want to get into someone else's language when I'm working.

When you're a songwriter and you click with someone, you tend to want to keep writing with that person.

I do outlines when I'm writing with someone, but they also need to have a certain amount of freedom.

Send it to someone who can publish it. And if they won't publish it, send it to someone else who can publish it! And keep sending it! Of course, if no one will publish it, at that point you might want to think about doing something other than writing.

Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines, only to cross out one of them 15 minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens. Who could stand to watch this kind of thing?

A writer writes. Period. No matter if someone is buying your work or not.

I have yet to have a successful outcome of sitting in a room with someone and trying to write a song. The way that I generally co-write is that someone else writes the music or part of the music.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

It's always hard when you're playing someone for a lot of people out there who are going to see the movie after reading the books. There's a communion between a reader and the writer, so people will have an idea who Sirius Black is and I might not be everyone's idea of that.

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything.

As thrilling as it was, speechwriting is ultimately frustrating for someone who wants to be a writer.

David Mamet we all know is a great screenplay writer and playwright and a great director. If you like him, you like him. If you hate him, you really hate him. He's someone who's into controversy, you know what I mean? That's David Mamet.

TV is very much a producer and writer or creator-driven machine in the States. And I'm the kind of actor that needs to be pushed and have someone on my case a little bit, so I suffer from that.

A literary critic is someone who can't write, but who loves to show he would have been a wonderful writer if only he could!

Any time a writer thinks he has all the answers to how someone should talk or react or end a scene, it's a spontaneity-killer.

I really believe that a writer is someone who has trained their mind to misbehave.

In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life.

Miller is not really a writer but a non-stop talker to whom someone has given a typewriter.

Even though my songs may sound very personal, to me most of them are fiction. It is a great way for me to be able to live a fantasy life as a writer because I get to be someone else, someplace else for three and a half minutes, just like the listener.

As a writer, I have learned that each time I pick up my pencil I betray someone.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don't hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.