Writing Quotes

Usually I decide on what it is I'm writing next by the books I'm reading.

I think what I've recognized over the years is that I'm very, very bingey, extremely bingey when it comes to writing.

Once you're directing, you're kind of in a certain mode, where you're taking whatever is on the page and forming it into the film that you think it might want to be. So whether it's my writing or not, I still try to work with it in the same way.

I did not think much what I was writing them for, except that I knew I wanted my next novel to be in some less conventional form than straight narrative.

You can get stale writing with each other for a while.

Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing.

The reason why I love people, and writing about them, is because they don't always respond with hate and anger. If they did I wouldn't have a story to tell. Who wants to know about someone who was brutalised and became brutal? I'm interested in the exceptions.

All writing is an act of self-exploration. Even a grocery list says something about you; how much more does a novel say?

I discovered in writing the biography of Bill Clinton that it is actually easier to write a biography of someone who is dead. Although you can't interview them, you have a fuller perspective on their whole life after they're gone and people are more willing to talk about them.

I fell into playwriting accidentally, took some classes in it, and also took creative writing classes, but I really didn't expect it to be a career because I didn't believe there was a way to make money as a playwright without being lucky and I didn't feel particularly lucky.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

I work eight hours a day, but I'm not writing all that time. I'm thinking, editing, looking something up. Thinking is what I do a lot of.

In the Steven F. Austin Colony, which was the first colony, Texans first established a provisional government in 1835 with the intention of writing a declaration of independence soon after.

So it was just a case of getting a bunch of songs that I had been writing for years but hadn't recorded together, and the result was My Own Best Enemy.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

My humor tends to be a little more edgy than is appropriate for 'Twilight,' although I got some in there. That was fun! There's just a tonal difference. For me, storytelling is storytelling. But, I do like writing for grown ups.

I keep a guitar around while writing and will improvise music. I do this for several reasons, such as that it's fun, and sometimes it helps me with the meter.

I try not to be overly literal. When I'm writing songs, I write down a lot of words, and then I try to simplify it. I like to give people hints or words that make visual pictures for them.

I often start writing in order to excite an expansive emotion.

Another thing that's quite different in writing a book as a practicing newspaperman is that if you look at what you've written the next morning and you think you didn't get it quite right, you can fix it.

I have often felt a motion of love to leave some hints in writing of my experience of the goodness of God, and now, in the thirty-sixth year of my age, I begin this work.

I have trouble writing if I can't picture how things are going to look.

I've been painting and drawing and taking pictures as long as I've been writing music - and I've actually been drawing longer than I've been writing music.

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.

The songs keep on writing themselves, and I really love them. It's as close as I get to a religion.

For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence.

We collaborate on everything. I'm involved in the writing and pre-production. There's a whole bunch of people who keep in touch at every step about everything.

My writing has a lot to do with who I am, and what my life is like, and my relationships to people.

I was standing in the schoolyard waiting for a child when another mother came up to me. Have you found work yet? she asked. Or are you still just writing?

I'm still auditioning and doing other movie parts, but I really like the developing and the writing. You have more control over your destiny.