If you're writing a catchphrase before you write a character, then that's not a good thing.
Catherine TateWriting songs is super intimate. It's a bit like getting naked.
Gwen StefaniI write when the urge hits me, getting the words down as fast as I can type and then I step back from what I just wrote and start a dialectical process where I begin challenging my own writing.
Donald McKaySongwriting is one of those strange arts whereby you can have no inspiration for a long time then have a productive period where almost every day a new song is coming to you.
Nanci GriffithThe hardest part is developing the idea, and that can take years. [on writing a novel]
Eric CarleNo machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding. [not at the time of writing anyhow Louis, who knows what the future will bring!]
Louis GerstnerI am a drinker with writing problems.
Brendan BehanWriting is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.
Don DeLilloI wish thee as much pleasure in the reading, as I had in the writing. (Emblems)
Francis QuarlesWriting is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness
Georges SimenonMan is a strange animal. He generally cannot read the handwriting on the wall until his back is up against it.
Adlai E StevensonVery often when we stay in a hotel we will rent a single room with a piano in it, buy loads of drinks and do this stuff. writing songs is my favourite pastime ever.
Vince ClarkeThere is creative reading as well as creative writing.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI spent several years acquiring the obsessive, day-to-day discipline that's needed if you want to write professionally, then several more, highly valuable years studying fiction writing at the University of Iowa.
John DaltonWould you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people.
Katherine MansfieldIn the writing of books, as all the world knows, two things are above all other things essential - the one is to know exactly when and where to leave off, and the other to be equally certain when and where to begin.
Jeffrey FarnolThe sheer complexity of writing a play always had dazzled me. In an effort to understand it, I became a critic.
Kenneth TynanShake[speare] was a dramatist of note; He lived by writing things to quote.
H C BunnerWriting stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.
Truman CapoteNever be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying or meditating or endeavoring something for the public good.
Thomas A KempisOn what? [when asked if he had ever thought of writing an autobiography!]
Chris EubankI'm pretty social so it's hard for me to find solitude, but I need to have solitude to write. [On the difficulties of writing - not writers block but loneliness]
Catie CurtisWhen I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing.
Tennessee WilliamsI don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.
Doris LessingEvery piece of writing... starts from what I call a grit... a sight or sound, a sentence or happening that does not pass away... but quite inexplicably lodges in the mind.
Rumer GoddenThere's nothing like music. It's seductive, it's all-consuming, it's emotional, it's infinitely creative... I was a singer-songwriter, not particularly talented musically [that's never stopped anyone before] but drawn to the craft of songwriting.
Jeffrey DeaverI was always a bit reluctant with anything like fame and the limelight and it didn't sit very well with me, although I love singing and writing.
Alex ParksWriting a book need not be an intimidating feeling, but rather it can be liberating, fulfilling and above all immensely personally satisfying.
Gerald GriffinRevision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing
Bernard MalamudWriting is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.
Iris MurdochMy writing is nothing, my boxing is everything.
Ernest HemingwayIf a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.
Ernest HemingwayMusically I wanted to explore my songwriting, branching out into my music. I’ve been playing blues since I started, and I wanted to go in more of a soul, R&B direction.
Jonny LangAll I want is a modest place in Mr X's Good Reading, Miss Y's Good Writing, and that new edition of One Thousand Best Bits of Recent Prose.
James AgateI would sweat and think and get it all together. [On lyric writing]
Jim CapaldiThe process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.
Elias CanettiDespite the fact that I had a writing background, they didn't want to accept whatever ideas I had as a writer.
John AmosI like the solitude of writing.
Paul GascoigneThe key to writing real characters is not to treat everybody like a real person and give everybody a good side and a bad.
Jon FavreauI don't plan to write another science book, but I don't plan not to. I do enjoy writing histories, and taking subjects that are generally dull and trying to make them interesting.
Bill BrysonI am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it.
Hilaire BellocAlmost all writing is an act of discovery for me.
Joseph EpsteinA life that is worth writing at all is worth writing minutely
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowMy two best pieces would have to be Ghosts of Mississippi and my new film Bookworm. Bookworm was special for me to do because I really idolize the writings of Mamet. Also, I got to work with Tony Hopkins, and I really love Tony.
Alec BaldwinPeople seem to be writing off England and that's a dangerous thing to do.
They have a lot of very good players and just because they haven't been going well over the last year and a bit, it doesn't mean they can't win anymore!
Andrew MehrtensEssentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they are in. It is a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters. [on the science, or art, of writing a book]
Elizabeth GeorgeAll the rest is mere fine writing. (Art poetique)
Paul VerlaineMy ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.
Anais NinEver since I can remember, I've always wanted to tell stories, but I never had the patience to sit down at a typewriter and write short stories or anything like that. I started writing songs as a way of communicating ideas the best way I could.
Rob ThomasInflated descriptions by the pen or exaggerated illustrations by the pencil. [On writing]
Grace Darling
Pick another category
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