Quotes about writing
writing trying worst
I am at my worst trying to write about things that overlap with my life. Jennifer Egan
writing stuff regularity
Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.
writing opposites way
That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious to find out.
writing normal strange
We're [writers] all afraid of writing badly, and there are psychological reasons, like the bad interior of ourselves is somehow being revealed, but we all fear that, and you can't write well if you're not willing to write badly. That's why you have to make writing a habit, so it feels normal and not strange.
writing years squad
Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.
writing technology thinking
I write fiction longhand. That's not so much about rejecting technology as being unable to write fiction on a computer for some reason. I don't think I would write it on a typewriter either. I write in a very blind gut instinctive way. It just doesn't feel right. There's a physical connection. And then in nonfiction that's not the case at all. I can't even imagine writing nonfiction by hand.
writing ideas interesting
A sense of that kind of narrative movement that we experience online could have been in my mind easily, though not consciously. I do rely so much on my unconscious, the way I write my stuff the way I do. I let my unconscious work. I have better ideas that way and more interesting work.
writing sublime lessons
The sublime moment seems to be only a product of allowing yourself to get through, to get to a lot of stuff in your life, write about a lot of stuff and not edit yourself. That is a great lesson to learn for anybody that writes or creates in anyway, to be able to make something without being good or bad. Jeff Tweedy
writing color way
I'm a visual thinker. With almost all of my writing, I start with something that's visual: either the way someone says something that is visual or an actual visual description of a scene and color. Gerald Vizenor
writing animal world
Remember that the animals and plants have no M.P. they can write to; they can't perform sit-down strikes or, indeed, strikes of any sort; they have nobody to speak for them except us, the human beings who share the world with them but do not own it. Gerald Durrell
writing civilization progress
All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization.
writing sacrifice order
if I believed that the choice lay between a sacrifice of the completest order of biography and that of the inviolability of private epistolary correspondence, I could not hesitate for a moment. I would keep the old and precious privacy,-the inestimable right of every one who has a friend and can write to him, - I would keep our written confidence from being made biographical material, as anxiously as I would keep our spoken conversation from being noted down for the good of society. Harriet Martineau
writing agency evil
The power of fictitious writing, for good as well as evil is a thing which ought most seriously to be reflected on. No one can fail to see that in our day it is becoming a very great agency. Harriet Beecher Stowe
writing men history
In the old times, women did not get their lives written, though I don't doubt many of them were much better worth writing than the men's.
writing thinking ideas
I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself. Harper Lee
writing hands use
About your writing with you left hand, are you ambidextrous, Mr. Ewell?" "I most positively am not, I can use one hand good as the other. One hand good as the other.
writing thinking iron
To be a serious writer requires discipline that is iron fisted. It's sitting down and doing it whether you think you have it in you or not. Everyday. Alone. Without interruption. Contrary to what most people think, there is no glamour to writing. In fact, it's heartbreak most of the time.
writing rewards virtue
Writing is simply something you must do. It's rather like virtue in that it is its own reward.
writing self salt
Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself...It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.
writing salt exorcism
Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.
writing thinking self
Writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they're quite different from people who must write.
writing preparation fiction
I was an outsider, never quite part of what was going on, always looking in. It turned out to be great preparation for writing fiction. Hallie Ephron
writing care intrigue
Write what you care about, what interests and intrigues you.
writing voice everyday
Words that in their everyday surrealism have no parallel in contemporary writing... Music that mines the deep veins of fatalism in the Appalachian voice Greil Marcus
writing thinking firsts
I think the novel form chose me. I was a writer before I became a criminal... my first instinct was to write. Gregory David Roberts
writing caring mirrors
I was just about to begin writing Mirror Mirror, within about a week of it, when September 11, 2001 happened. I found myself incapable of caring about fiction-making for a number of months. Gregory Maguire
writing should-have done
The day it comes out, there's already things that you start to go, 'Oh, I should have done that a little differently.' You start to make a list in your head. I actually write things down -- what I'm going to do next time. Howie Day
writing thinking different
When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do. Howard Nemerov
writing paper firsts
Writing is like the relationship with your bowels. First you can, then you can't. Finally, you must. Only then should you reach for the paper.
writing icy said
I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority). Gore Vidal
writing thinking mind
I don't write with any audience in mind. I just write. I take a chance on the audience. That's what I did originally, and I think it's worked--in the sense that I find there is an audience. Harold Pinter
writing names challenges
When a director writes, there's a compulsory arbitration. You have a right to challenge any of the arbitrators, but they pick three of four arbitrators who read all the drafts with no names attached and then allocate credit. Harold Ramis
writing stories next
There's a personal story of my own that I will write at some point, and it's a film that I will happily make. It could very well be the next thing I do, unless someone shows me something great.