Quotes about writing
writing islands wanted
Jamaica Kincaid I come from the small island of Antigua and I always wanted to write; I just didn't know that it was possible.
writing successful careers
Jamaica Kincaid The thing about writing in America is that writers in America have an arc. You enter writing as a career, you expect to be successful, and really it's the wrong thing. It's not a profession.
writing thinking way
Jamaica Kincaid I think in many ways the problem that my writing would have with an American reviewer is that Americans find difficulty very hard to take. They are inevitably looking for a happy ending.
writing people important
Jamaica Kincaid In my writing I'm trying to explore the violations people commit upon each other. And the important thing isn't whether I'm angry. The more important thing is, is it true? Do these things really happen?
writing sound novel
Jamaica Kincaid The sound of words in a novel is a pretty amazing thing, and I am concerned with the sound of every word I write.
writing defiance
Jamaica Kincaid I write out of defiance.
writing white black
Jamaica Kincaid In my writing, I'm often describing a universal situation. A situation in which human beings often choose to violate each other. Sometimes I happen to explore that in terms of the black/white dynamic. Generally, a white person does not like me to say, or does not like to be told, "You know, what you did was incredibly wrong."
writing simple reality
Jamaica Kincaid Gardeners (or just plain simple writers who write about the garden) always have something they like intensely and in particular, right at the moment you engage them in the reality of the borders they cultivate, the space in the garden they occupy at any moment, they like in particular this, or they like in particular that.
writing certain i-can
Jamaica Kincaid I read about writers who have routines. They write at certain times of the day. I can't do that. I am always writing-but in my head.
writing crap ifs
Jamaica Kincaid If you just sit there, and you're a writer, you're bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals.
writing calling holy
Jamaica Kincaid Writing is not a profession. It's a calling. It's almost holy.
writing fiction useless
Jamaica Kincaid So much history, if you or I were to write it, could seem a fiction. These separations, these lines that tell us this is fiction or non-fiction, that this is history or this is a novel, are often useless.
writing black peculiar
Jamaica Kincaid I'm writing out of desperation. I felt compelled to write to make sense of it to myself - so I don't end up saying peculiar things like 'I'm black and I'm proud.' I write so I don't end up as a set of slogans and clichés.
writing important crafts
Jamaica Kincaid What I don't write is as important as what I write.
writing thinking garden
Jamaica Kincaid When I'm writing, I think about the garden, and when I'm in the garden I think about writing. I do a lot of writing by putting something in the ground.
writing goes-on revision
Jamaica Kincaid I write a lot in my head. The revision goes on internally. It's not spontaneous and it doesn't have a schedule.
writing people feelings
Jamaica Kincaid I would be lost without the feeling of antagonism that people have towards me. I write out of defiance.
writing
Jaime Winstone I tend to write more when I travel.
writing work-out trying
Jacques Audiard When things aren't working out, we have a tendency to say, 'Go do other things,' but you shouldn't do other things. You need to stay at your desk and continue to try to write. You need to insist on it.
writing imagine easy
Jacqueline Woodson Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?
writing knowing feelings
Jacqueline Woodson Sometimes, I don't know that words for things, how to write down the feeling of knowing that every dying person leaves something behind.
writing thinking giving
Jacqueline Woodson I think it's important to remember that writing is a gift and our stories are gifts to ourselves and to the world and sometimes giving isn't always the easiest thing to do but it comes back.
writing secret facts
Jacques Derrida No one will ever know from what secret I am writing and the fact that I say so changes nothing.
writing feelings stronger
Jacques Derrida Actually, when I write, there is a feeling of necessity, of something that is stronger than myself that demands that I must write as I write.
writing order years
Jacques Derrida During the fifteen or twenty years in which I tried - it was not always easy with publishers, newspapers, etc. - to forbid photographs, it was not at all in order to mark a sort of blank, absence, or disappearance of the image; it was because the code that dominates at once the production of these images, the framing they are made to undergo, the social implications (showing the writer's head framed in front his bookshelves, the whole scenario) seemed to me to be, first of all, terribly boring, but also contrary to what I am trying to write and to work on.
writing language traditional
Jacques Derrida The traditional statement about language is that it is in itself living, and that writing is the dead part of language.
writing opposites names
Jacques Barzun Grab a pen and put down some words - your name even - and a title: something to see, to revise, to carve, to do over in the opposite way
writing bad-writing scholarship
Jacques Barzun Bad writing, it is easily verified, has never kept scholarship from being published.
writing race political
Jacques Barzun Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.
writing simple thinking
Jackie Earle Haley I've got a lot of wonderfully talented, creative directors I've worked with in Texas, but the market we're in, they kind of have to write to that. I think we've done some cool, simple spots. I was very comfortable in Texas, and getting ready to push out into national stuff, try to get to that national-type creative, and then I got sidetracked with this stuff.
writing redneck thinking
Jackie DeShannon Well, as an artist, I think that Elvis's generosity to me he always talked very highly about me, he always spoke very highly about my work and singing and my writing.
writing missing together
Jackee Harry I don't want to take all the time. I just want to do what you wrote and let me go from there. I don't want to miss something. You know, I'm not really a writer per se, but I can write. But I can't put a script together like they can.