Writing Quotes

I can come off as pretty arrogant, but it's because I know I'm right. I'm very, very good at writing protocols. I've accomplished more working on my own than I ever did as part of a team.

It is not important for me as a writer that you leave a piece of writing of mine with either an agreement or even a resonance with what I have said. What is important is that you leave with the resonance of what you have felt and what you thought in reaction to that.

Writing is a lonely job unless you're a drinker, in which case you always have a friend within reach.

I teach one semester a year, and this year I'm just teaching one course during that semester, a writing workshop for older students in their late 20s and early 30s, people in our graduate program who are already working on a manuscript and trying to bring it to completion.

Dean had just come from seeing his lawyer. That was the first time that I found out that he had consulted a lawyer. He wanted to tell me what he thought was going on, but he was writing it down as if my house was bugged. He acted like everything was bugged.

My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection.

When you're writing, it's as if you're within a kind of closed world.

My job is writing. I get paid to do it. When was the last time you heard someone challenge a doctor for making money off of cancer?

We absolutely need to reform the Congressional budget-writing process.

I like going back and writing fiction.

I am writing a book and that takes third place of importance.

Writing novels is the most exciting.

I have three desks. One empty for paperwork, one for the internet and email, and one for the writing computer.

Directing is a more pragmatic experience, where you have to deal with the restrictions of time and money that force you to make certain decisions you don't have to make when you're writing.

When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers.

I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.

Writing was not a childhood dream of mine. I do not recall longing to write as a student. I wasn't sure how to start.

In terms of my Indianness, I try not to rely on it nor deny it. When it comes up organically in my writing, we can address it. About five years ago, we wrote this episode of 'The Office,' called 'Diwali,' which seemed like an organic way of using it.

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.