Writing Quotes

All of my writing is God-given.

I use the music to vent, and a lot of the stuff that I am writing about or was writing about contained a lot of anger and anxiety, stress and depression, so that's how the album came out so dark.

The real danger of writing a great song when you're on something is that it might get you thinking that the only way to repeat that is by only writing when you're high.

Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own.

I would fix other people's lines if they asked me on occasion. The hard part of writing is the architecture of it, getting the story and structuring it. Not the tweaking of lines.

I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it.

After the children grew up, I began to focus on my writing. My first books were part of a trilogy... The 'Wind Dance' trilogy.

There is more good writing and good acting in any ten minutes of Twister than in, say, all of Citizen Kane.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

I used to like writing for comedians - I enjoyed the challenge of making other people funny.

Music is very influential to my writing, as are theater and film.

I have writing songs on my own for about six years.

By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.

When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.

Shakespeare was a dramatist of note who lived by writing things to quote.

I feel I have to work hard to nurture whatever talent I have as an actor. I feel like it's not natural to me. So I don't take it for granted... What I think is my natural ability - which is writing - I think I totally take that for granted.

My major aim in writing is to set out flags and issue wake-up calls.

The whole point of writing is to have something in your gut or in your soul or in your mind that's burning to be written.

What has bothered and angered radical Muslims is that I'm a non-Muslim writing anything at all about Islam. But this is fiction, and I don't think Islam is above criticism or fictionalization any more so than Judaism, Christianity, Mormonism or Hinduism is.

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.