Writing Quotes

My writing improved the more I wrote - and the more I read good writing, from Shakespeare on down.

My lab and academic work fill my day from about 9 am to 7 p.m. Then I zoom out the lens to work on my other writing.

Now, if, as I think, writing should be, it's a kind of risky trade.

I've been doing my big theater projects, which take years, and writing a song here and there.

As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel, in one sense, is a problem-solving exercise.

I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.

Then l learned to play guitar and l started writing songs and my mother formed for me a publishing business, so we started publishing and managing artists.

Writing headlines is a specialty - there are outstanding writers who will tell you they couldn't write a headline to save their lives.

I was always drawn to Broadway musicals, and obviously composers like Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin and Porter were writing music that I found wildly impressive.

My total year's income from working as hard as I possibly could from writing went from like $30 one year to about $70 the next year. And it made me realize that maybe you couldn't really pay the rent that way.

There is a kind of mysticism to writing.

I like writing because you can make things happen and turn out the way they never do in real life.

I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.

Late night is no different than making a film, really, except that it's faster, and if you do a crap one, you can do a better one tomorrow. Writing a novel and doing stand-up - that stuff is very similar.

Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.

I started writing short stories. I tried writing horror, mystery, science fiction. I joined a little critique group here in town and ran my stories past them. After about three years, I tackled my first novel, Subterranean. It took me 11 months to write.

I think I would spend the first 30 weeks not writing, just clearing my head and seeing parts of the world I haven't seen and going back to places I have seen and love.

It's immoral that people make money out of writing crap, but I try not to obsess about it. I don't want to spend my life being angry.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

It ended up being a very good thing, because they finally started writing for the character, and I realized that you have to go to work with a purpose. I learned from the experience and then moved on.

On the other hand when you are someone who records their own songs you are basically stuck writing for one voice and for one style that can stifle you a bit. It's a real trade off.

That's why, when Alias came along, I knew I'd be OK if the show was on for five or six years because the writing was so good and the creative team was so strong.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

I've supported myself by writing since 1992, and I'm probably very nearly unemployable by now because employers are likely to be put off by the long gap.

When you are writing, of course, you have to do all that writing and correcting for yourself. When I was a librarian it was expected that I would know about a wide range of books.

I can't remember why or how I started writing, but I think it was always a way of making sense of the world.

When I'm writing, I'm constantly thinking about myself, because it's the only experience I have to draw on. And I don't see an exact reflection of myself in every face in the audience, but I know that my songs have validity to them, and that's why the fans are there.

In writing, I search for believability, simplicity and emotional impact.

In the history of literature there are many great enduring works which were not published in the lifetimes of the authors. If the authors had not achieved self-affirmation while writing, how could they have continued to write?

What's the challenge in writing a novel that few people will read? I'm more than happy writing what I do and have no plans to change that.