Writing Quotes

He was certainly in a confused state. I used to go and visit him in Callan Park. They were really - to me they were the best poets those two writing in those days but it wasn't very encouraging because, well, they weren't getting far were they?

On the other hand, I mean, that is what writers have always been supposed to do, was to rely on their own devices and to - I mean, writing is a lonely business.

If someone decides to be a musician now, it means because there is no hope of money at the end of it, it means they really want to be a musician. And if someone is writing now, there is no hope for money at the end of it.

In the writing of memoirs, as in the production of shows, too much caution causes the audience to nod and think of other channels.

Writing, I'm convinced, should be a subversive activity - frowned on by the authorities - and not one cooed over and praised beyond common sense by some teacher.

Have a working spouse, because you won't earn a living from writing - not at first, if ever. My wife worked for years to support us.

It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing.

Plus, I love comic writing. Nothing satisfies me more than finding a funny way to phrase something.

Now I'm doing a film festival for kids and writing a script about a kidnapped journalist in Afghanistan.

Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

I started writing books for children because I could illustrate them myself and because, in my innocence, I thought they'd be easier.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Every writer has his writing technique - what he can and can't do to describe something like war or history. I'm not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

My only real claim to anyone's attention lies in my writing.

The first four months of writing the book, my mental image is scratching with my hands through granite. My other image is pushing a train up the mountain, and it's icy, and I'm in bare feet.

Certainly the plagiarism, and dealing with the fallout of it, was the most difficult thing I've ever faced since I started writing.

I cry all the time when I watch 'Glee' because I don't know if it's satire or melodrama and that makes me feel like the writing is aware of itself, and that makes it OK to cry.

I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.

That's what my life is, writing songs.

It seems to me that many writers, by virtue of environments of culture, art and education, slip into writing because of their environments.

There's a mystery to writing, and you don't really know where most of it comes from.

It took me a couple of years after I got out of Berkeley before I dared to start writing. That academic mind-set - which was kind of shallow in my case anyway - had begun to fade.

But, if there's any aspect of my career that needs attention, it's writing.

Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It's not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it's just like turning on the faucet. That's just the nature of it.

First of all, writing at best - certainly fiction writing - more and more I think is magic.

There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

There's two facets to writing a song. There's you sitting in your room writing the sentiments of the song; the lyrics, the melody and the changes, and then there's the part where you go into the studio and you put clothing on it.

When I'm not writing, I read loads of fiction, but I've been writing quite constantly lately so I've been reading a lot of nonfiction - philosophy, religion, science, history, social or cultural studies.

I cling to the fantasy that I could have done something more creative. Like actually writing a script, or writing a book. But the awful truth is that I... probably can't!

I have been around for a long, long time. I didn't make it 'til I was older. I went through the period when women were not getting signed, particularly if you were writing songs that were lyrically propelled.