Writing Quotes

What has bothered and angered radical Muslims is that I'm a non-Muslim writing anything at all about Islam. But this is fiction, and I don't think Islam is above criticism or fictionalization any more so than Judaism, Christianity, Mormonism or Hinduism is.

The truth is, I initially became a singer-songwriter while still in my teens because it was the only way to guarantee that somebody on earth would sing the songs I was writing. Since then, I've performed just about everywhere: rock clubs, concerts halls, arenas, TV.

As you get older you're told to be sensible, but it's important for writing if you're a comic that you're able to still access that childlike thing.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

I have grown in my writing and I care about it now and I know how important it is to write stuff.

The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people, and then they come after you with machetes.

So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

The difficulty of writing a good theatre play set in new reality was even greater given that the level of similitude to life that is allowed in a film would not work on the stage.

I can never tell ahead of time which book will give me trouble - some balk every step of the way, others seem to write themselves - but certainly the mechanics of writing, finding the time and the psychic space, are easier now that my children are grown.

I started writing rhymes first and then put it to the music. I figured out I could lock it to the beat better if I heard the music first. I like to get a lot of tracks, put the track up and let the music talk to me about what it's about.

Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.

The advice would be the same for any kind of fiction. Keep writing, and keep sending things out, not to friends and relatives, but to people who have the power to buy. A lot of additional, useful tips could be added, but this is fundamental.

I find writing songs hard, because it does not come naturally to me. I never set out to be a songwriter or a singer.

Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations.

I didn't always want to act. My passion was writing, and it still is one of my primary passions to this day, but it wasn't until high school when I started acting in plays that it became a thought of something I might want to do. And when I applied to colleges, at NYU, I was able to study both writing and acting.

I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself.

Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially.

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

You become a better writer by writing. You become a better travel writer by writing about travel.

It did not prepare me for writing or "Power of Attorney." However, what it did is that it forced me out of the DA's office. I stopped getting that county check.

I have always used emotion as a writing tool. That goes back to me being on the stage.

But when I was a little kid, I was always writing stories and illustrating little books that I would create.

The Pleasure Seekers eventually turned into Cradle, when we started writing our own material. My younger sister Nancy was brought in as singer and I kind of stepped aside as main lead singer and concentrated on my instrument.

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

So I learnt a few country western songs, I bought a chord book, and right away I started writing my own stuff, which nobody else did that, I don't know why.

People think my work is therapeutic. I don't see it that way. It's not like I'm saving money from a weekly therapy visit by writing down my life.

I will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don't know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.

It certainly made a film writing career for me.

I'm not actually teaching any more, but I am writing pieces for schools all the time, and for kids.

I'm a joke comic. I tell jokes. I like writing a joke, and I like when a joke works, and I like other comics who tell jokes.