Writing Quotes

Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.

I remember being out here at the Sunset Marquis, and whoever knocked on the door, I would take that picture that I was writing and I would put that in the typewriter, so when I had the meeting, they would say: 'Oh, you're working on it right now?'

What I mean is that none of my talents had a - what's that great word - rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer - there was nothing I could really say I was. The writing came much later. And, actually, thank God, because if I had said I'm a singer, I would really have just had one thing to do.

I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.

I think enthusiasm is the answer to passionate writing.

I don't want my writing to be so unique that when you apply it to different genres, it seems like the previous show that people know you from.

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

If I wasn't writing poems I'd be washing my hands all the time.

I can't envisage stopping writing.

That's what writing is all about, after all, making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there.

For me, writing something down was the only road out.

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.

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.