Writing Quotes

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you're opposed to it. But when you're writing a novel, you don't want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

I went to college, but I learned to write by reading - and writing.

I tend to discourage people from calling me 'Sir Ian,' because I don't like being separated out from the rest of the population. Of course, it can be useful if you're writing an official letter, like trying to get a visa or something passed through Parliament. They're impressed by these things.

Many days I don't write any code at all, and some days I spend all day writing code.

It's the technique, I think, of writing a novel that is difficult for a nonfiction writer.

Fiction writing was in my blood from a very young age, but I never considered writing as a real career. I thought you had to have some literary pedigree to be a successful author, the son of Hemingway or Fitzgerald.

I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word - for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals.

I have one main reader, Miriam Gomez, my wife. She reads everything I write - I have not finished writing something and she is already reading it.

I have four shelves covered with journals that I've written. Dad and I are writing songs together. I've probably written 100 songs.

I have to always remember, writing is really hard.

I honestly feel like we never had a bad episode by TV standards. Every week I felt there were so many strong components of the show, especially the writing.

'Thank you power' is writing down the moments that are good in your life so that you can go back and reflect on them - so you've got this sort of repository of good stuff in your past.

My brother says that I was writing songs about fate while he was off playing soccer. Now I tell him he's 33 and being a professional while I'm playing soccer with my friends. Ha!

I began like all composers, writing for small groups. Chamber groups.

I've always looked upon the Ducks as caricature human beings. Perhaps I've been years writing in that middle world that J.R.R. Tolkien describes, and never knew it.

The creative act is like writing a letter. A letter is a project; you don't sit down to write a letter unless you know what you want to say and to whom you want to say it.

It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.

It's just a matter of writing the kind of book I enjoy reading. Something better be happening at the beginning, and then on every page after, or I get irritated.

I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.

I do not think men have more talent. There are a great many women in the arts; novelists, painters, sculptors, poets-but the proportion is far lower in the field of song writing.

I didn't feel the need for anonymous affection, for people in the dark applauding. To me, it would be like writing a novel and then getting up every night and reading your novel.

When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author.

The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite.

Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law.

I didn't have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

I designed all the characters, anyway, and Frank Doyle was doing all the writing. I didn't have any more input on what direction they were going to go with Josie.

Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

If I really considered myself a writer, I wouldn't be writing screenplays. I'd be writing novels.