Writing quotes
30.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"There came this point where I sat down with all my notebooks and I had to start to write, when I thought: this whole notion of writing for the person who understands nothing, the average reader ... He has to die! I can't have him in my head. And so the person I started writing for was the homicide detective."
"Poets are excellent students of blizzards and salt and broken statuary, but they are always elsewhere for the test. Any intention in the writing of poetry besides the aim to make a poem, of engaging the materials, SHOULD be disappointed. If the poet does not have the chutzpah to jeopardize habituated assumptions and practices, what will be produced will be sleep without dream, a copy of a copy of a copy."
"I think it's silly for anyone to think you could write under the influence, but if they'd like to think that, I'd like to keep the legend alive. Maybe I was under the influence when I wrote Jesus' Son and I just didn't know it."
"Writing shouldn't come between the reader and what's being described. It should be as transparent as possible."
"People can take your name and write a book about you and they make money off of it. How is the public supposed to know you're not authorizing that book? As soon as you make a big stink about it it only makes the book sell more."
"I learned early on that I could get a lot of attention by singing and writing little songs, so it was like throwing nuts to a monkey... I just couldn't get enough."
"I'm so thankful I can write songs. I can capture all those memories in my songs and keep those memories alive."
"My biggest extravagances are also investments. I have several houses in California, a house in Nashville, an office complex, and I bought the old home place in Tennessee. They are different places for me to write, but I can turn right around and sell them."
"I've never had a divorce, but I've seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can't write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I'm able to kind of express it, or their joy."
"I pestered the hell out of everybody I ran into until I could play the guitar well enough to write and sing with it."
"Writing gave me a second chance - not to change things, but to savor them. That is a great gift."
"It's not like I'm not writing great music anymore, it's just that I want to take it another level."
"You have a huge number of people who spend their time writing papers which show that migrants pay more to the country than they take out in benefits, and they say, "Why don't you approve of migration? Why don't you open up borders?" They're not able to empathize with how people feel about migration."
"It's true that I have spoken about doing a book before, but then everyone you speak to is planning to write a book."
"It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and then write it sentence by sentence - no first draft. I can't write five words but that I change seven."
"I think each of us can, through our writing, discover our super power"
"I think writers would do better to consider that idea [to write to yourself], because you know yourself really well, and you never know your demographic fully. You only get into trouble if you try to please somebody you don't really understand."
"I write every day for two hours. But it's what I do for the other twenty-two hours that allows me to write."
"If you take the time and put in the effort to write your own material and absolutely refuse to be denied the right to make your film it is difficult whatever colour you are."
"Focus on action! Go on! Do it! Call them! Write it! Say it! Grab it! Who knows what 'awesome stuff' might happen? Yes - Action is the key!"
