Writing Quotes

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

Right now, writing for me is most rewarding because I'm old enough now to have something to say, which probably wasn't always the case.

Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will - with luck - come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise.

Some writing and production projects will be a great way to spend my elderly rock years.

Writing an acceptance speech gives you the expectation of winning, and you are therefore devastated or hurt if you didn't win.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

When I was writing my first two books I was also freelancing and teaching and doing other odd jobs.

I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.

I used to love writing in my journal.

So that's why one of my rules of parody writing is that it's gotta be funny regardless of whether you know the source material. It has to work on its own merit.

The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way.

One of the things I particularly enjoyed doing was taking raw sound from locations during the film, like the candy machine, and writing pieces of music to go with them, which is totally unnecessary within the context of the film, because they have their own logic.

Writing as a woman presents enormous problems but I have attempted it several times and haven't had many complaints.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

I hate it when people don't recognize the work of women as being universal, or having any import to the world at large, as opposed to men's work, which is generally tends to be seen as more universal - men's writing about their own experience tends to be put in a broader context.

My father I liked, but it was only after his death that I got to know him by writing the play.

There are quite a few honest songwriters out there writing about relationships and their own personality traits. But for some reason, once they step out of the bedroom, their honesty doesn't seem to come with them.

I'd always loved to read - and come from a family of readers - but I never thought about writing as a career.

You think you have some stable talent that 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. Gradually, gradually you gain that confidence.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

I just like to entertain myself by sitting down and writing songs.

I read every screenplay that was being sent to the other directors. None were being sent to me, but I was reading what others were choosing and what the best writers were writing.

Writing's still the most difficult job I've ever had - but it's worth it.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

The child from nine to 12 interests me very much. And so, those were the years that I like to write about, when I'm writing.

I spent the first twenty years of my writing career preparing for the mystery genre, which is my favorite literary form.

All I can guess is that when I write, I forget that it's not real. I'm living the story, and I think people can read that sincerity about the characters. They are real to me while I'm writing them, and I think that makes them real to the readers as well.

Having been an actor and a writer for so long - 20 years or so - I felt that it would be daft to go to one's grave without having directed. It's a natural extension of writing and acting, and so I knew it would happen one day.

Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft - not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing.

This 'Making Mirrors' album is far more personal, even if there's a character element to the sounds I'm working with. Every song on this album I stand behind; I feel like I have a close relationship with them. There are older songs where I can feel myself writing a story, so this is the first album where I'm proud of every lyric.'