Quotes about writing
writing dark thinking
I think that the dark side of MFA programs is that they're generating more poets than the culture can absorb and there are more people writing poetry than possibly read it or can certainly earn a living around it. Edward Hirsch
writing thinking people
I think the culture can absorb so many people writing poetry and trying to earn their living in poetry.
writing journey thinking
think what you hope for is that at different times of your life you're able to write the poetry that reflects the moment that you're in on your own journey.
writing bookstores questions-and-answers
I was once doing a question and answer period with the novelist Jane Smiley in a bookstore and someone asked us what our processes were and Jane said hers and then I said mine and Jane said, "Well, if I had a student like that I'd force him never to write like that again because you could never write a novel in the way that you write poetry."
writing errors trial-and-error
So, it's a continual process of trial and error and then I find things and I throw it out and start again, but I keep writing it over again.
writing space able
Now, as I've gotten older I've been able to write more quickly. Sometimes I get in the space of something and I can do a lot in a day.
writing thinking mysterious-things
The mysterious thing about writing poetry is that when you're - when things are going poorly, when you're not thinking well, even making two sentences together is extremely hard and I just can't make the connections.
writing feelings fluency
And when I'm writing well and when I'm inside the feeling, then I can do fairly complicated things with some fluency.
writing thinking fiction
I think the deepest thing is that many fiction writers tell stories but are not elegant writers. But, we're not writing journalism when we're making literature.
writing two eight
I write a line and then I revise the line and then I write two lines and then I revise lines one and two and then I write one, two and three and I revise one and two and then I write seven and eight and then I see that should be line four and I continually work it over as I go.
writing giving feelings
You're alone with yourself and your own feelings and that gives you deeper access to what you need to get in touch with to write poetry.
writing systematic never-quit
Now, the process of writing poetry is very messy. Not systematic, never quite the same
writing feelings want
Sometimes I have a feeling that I just can't get rid of. Sometimes there's an experience that I want to write about that I have to get off my chest. Sometimes there are some words that appeal to you.
writing college trying
I guess that would have been 1968. I was a freshman in college and I wasn't writing good poems, but I was at least trying to write poems then.
writing mind writing-poems
I didn't sit down then and start writing poems, but it was in the back of my mind.
writing thinking two
And what I've found over time is that for me to write a poem that I think is worthy that I can live with, two things have to happen.
writing emotional ideas
One, something emotional has to be at stake. There has to be something important for me that I'm writing about. And then two, I have to have a formal idea. Something has to be being worked out in poetry.
writing gertrude stranger
Gertrude Stein said, "I write for myself and strangers." I would say I write for myself, strangers and the great dead.
writing creative needs
When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry. And the reason for that is because the fiction writers seemed to need to learn how to pay greater attention to language itself, to the way that language works.
writing thinking creating
That you write a phrase or you think of something and it seems to have a deeper charge because the title has to be some kind of marker, something setting out a space, creating a space for what's going to come.
writing titles ends
And my experience is the best titles, for me, emerge in the process of writing. They don't usually come at the very beginning and hopefully they don't come at the very end because then it's getting late in the day.
writing thinking careers
I would say there are different kinds of poems. There are things that poets in the history of poetry hit upon when they're very young that can never be outdone and it's a remarkable, strange experience when you think of say Arthur Rimbaud who write poetry between the ages of 17 and 21 whose career was over by the time he was 22.
writing air castles
There is more pleasure to building castles in the air than on the ground. Edward Gibbon
writing pages way
My last page is always latent in my first; but the intervening windings of the way become clear only as I write. Edith Wharton
writing letters way
there are lots of ways of answering a letter - and writing doesn't happen to be mine.
writing age routine
The other producer of old age is habit: the deathly process of doing the same thing in the same way at the same hour day after day, first from carelessness, then from inclination, at last from cowardice or inertia. Luckily the inconsequent life is not the only alternative; for caprice is as ruinous as routine. Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.
writing cooking identity
But what I'm very interested in, whether it's writing, whether it's hosting a show, whether it's cooking food, I'm just into the discussions of identity, culture and the politics of culture. Eddie Huang
writing taste were-not-meant-to-be
Anything you have to acquire a taste for was not meant to be eaten. Eddie Murphy
writing people asking
I would like to be writing more because people are constantly asking me questions, and I write down what they are asking me. Eartha Kitt
writing people satire
Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out. Dawn Powell
writing way enough
If I know what my finale is when I'm writing a screenplay, then I don't always have to chart out every scene before that. I can adequately find my way. I'm experienced enough to do that. David Twohy
writing cutting thinking
Strangely, I always have a lot of cut scenes. I keep writing shorter and shorter scripts, thinking that this time, I'll get all my scenes in.
writing cartoon my-time
Everybody has a cartoon of themselves. Mine is: I write very fast, and I'm ruthlessly efficient with my time. David Remnick