Writing Quotes

The reason that I keep writing is that all my most powerful messages about the fates of wild places that I care about need to have words as well as images.

My writing comes not from the happy moments, but from struggle and grief.

If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.

If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.

The essays are different because ultimately it's things I'm interested in, and I'm really just writing about myself and using those subjects as a prism.

The writing is really hard. You're alone. It really pulls it out of you. You pull it out of your head. But when you're a director, you're shopping - you're picking this actor, you're picking this scene. It's like the most intense kinetic high-speed shopping of all time. You sit in a chair and it will all come rushing at you like a wind tunnel.

Sometimes I eavesdrop on people. I could rationalize it - oh, this is good anthropological research for characters I'm writing - but it's basically just nosiness. It also helps me gauge where I'm at: Am I normal?

I don't think Capote loved Smith. But he did make a deep connection. It upset some people, because that had never been the approach to journalistic crime writing, to look into the mind of the killer.

Not only are Christians writing about Jesus, but also Communists, Jews, atheists and agnostics are taking up their pens to paint a portrait of Jesus.

I'm one of those writers who, when writing, believes she's god-and that she hasn't bestowed free will on any of her characters. In that sense there are no surprises in any of my books.

Well I've been writing books. So that, by its nature, is kind of a solitary occupation. And from time to time I have research help, but mostly I've done those completely on my own.

There is a growing literature about the multitude of journalism's problems, but most of it is concerned with the editorial side of the business, possibly because most people competent to write about journalism are not comfortable writing about finance.

Writing, producing and directing, I must say, is incredibly satisfying and gratifying. I've never been happier.

If you are a married man resident in Cuba, you cannot get a passport to go to the next town without your wife's permission in writing.

But usually I'll wake up and start writing about nine o'clock. I'll probably write for about three hours, and I'll do that over the next month and a half.

You fail only if you stop writing.

I want to be an animated character. I'm also doing more writing and directing.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.

I wasn't really writing with anything commercial in mind I just wanted to create some new music.

In high school, I won a prize for an essay on tuberculosis. When I got through writing the essay, I was sure I had the disease.

I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing, Literary and Dramatic.

I am much more involved in the filmmaking experience on Mag Seven. I'm much more involved in story elements, casting decisions, the writing of the show, the blocking of the scenes.

The trick to writing for people is, you have to be able to turn them on in your head. And know how they'd word something or how they'd inflect it.

I had been writing professionally since 1988.

My writing style is very sensual, as in sensory detail.

Writing doesn't come easily to me. It gets more and more difficult.

And how is clarity to be achieved? Mainly by taking trouble and by writing to serve people rather than to impress them.

The first time I tried to write was when I was 14, after I got an electric guitar. I put a song together, and it wasn't that bad! The writing came natural to me.

I've got my own studio, so I sit in my studio writing and if I get a great take, that's the take.

I cry, sometimes, because I'm not 20 years younger, and I'm not healthy. But if I were, I would even sacrifice my writing to enter politics.