Writing Quotes

In a chemistry class there was a guy sitting in front of me doing what looked like a jigsaw puzzle or some really weird kind of thing. He told me he was writing a computer program.

If I could go back in time and tell my younger self that eventually that I'd become very successful writing Dune books after Frank Herbert's death, I would have laughed myself silly, I think, at how strange that prospect would be.

Good sense is both the first principal and the parent source of good writing.

My mother bought a piano, put it in the front room, and I just started writing my songs.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

When I started writing this, I found that I simply couldn't take fantasy seriously, so it became humorous, and continued from there.

Writing is total grunt work. A lot of people think it's all about sitting and waiting for the muse. I don't buy that. It's a job. There are days when I really want to write, days when I don't. Every day I sit down and write.

What I used to do between writing fits was feed my kids, ride my horse and go shopping for cat and dog food.

Elizabeth, Lady C, claims to be writing at the limits of language. Would it not be insulting to her if I were diligently to follow after her, explaining what she means but is not smart enough to say?

I'm not a born writer, and I don't enjoy writing.

Writing is very much a playground - an artistic playground. It's the most fun thing I do.

I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since.

Writing is learning to say nothing, more cleverly each day.

I have a 10-year track record of writing for the Jewish community.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.

But one does not make living writing poetry unless you're a professor, and one frankly doesn't get a lot of girls as a poet.

My other advice is to start writing songs and singing right away.

Few writers are willing to admit writing is autobiographical.

I really enjoy the therapeutic value of writing songs.

I put off writing the first Left Behind book for a year because I got invited to assist Billy Graham in his memoirs, and had we known what we were putting off for a year, we might not have put it off.

The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis.

I don't use my writing career as a vehicle to get me acting work or to write roles for myself.

I'm supposed to be taking time off. But I'm still writing and I have this Gap advert lined up.

I never had any frustration about writing uncredited. I always felt that the satisfaction of doing it was in the doing of it, really, and getting recognised by the small number of people that know what you did.

I don't think there's any great mystery to writing female characters, so long as you talk to them. If you lived in a monastery and never met any women, maybe it would be difficult.

You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.

People spend a lifetime thinking about how they would really like to live. I asked my friends and no one seems to know very clearly. To me it's very clear now. I wish my life could have been like the years when I was writing 'Love in the Time of Cholera.'

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom.

I admired what my students were writing, but I think their improvement doesn't directly result from me but from being in a class, being with each other.