"I wanted to try to write songs on the piano to get a different flavor."
Read quote
6 likes
Writing quotes
Writing
30.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Writing
Browse quotes that often appear alongside writing — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Writing quotes (page 149 of 1537)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"If I were to write anything at all, it would turn out to be nothing but talk about movies. In other words, take 'myself,' subtract 'movies,' and the result is 'zero.'"
Read quote
6 likes
"The preservation of the Jew was certainly not casual. He has endured through the power of a certain ideal, based on the recognition of a Higher Power in human affairs. Time after time in his history, moreover, he has been saved from disaster in a manner, which cannot be described excepting as 'providential.' The author has deliberately attempted to write this book in a secular spirit; he does not think that his readers can fail to see in it, on every page, a higher immanence"
Read quote
6 likes
"I read a lot. I spend of lot time thinking. It actually looks like I'm doing nothing, but... hanging out with clever and interesting people is a must if you're writing comedy, like hanging out with a good bass player when you're a drummer."
Read quote
6 likes
"Enough of self, that darling luscious theme, O'er which philosophers in raptures dream; Of which with seeming disregard they write Then prizing most when most they seem to slight."
Read quote
6 likes
"People complain of the unequal distribution of wealth [but it is a far greater] injustice that any one man should have the power to write so many brilliant essays... There is no one who writes like [Thomas Huxley]."
Read quote
6 likes
"I have long discovered that geologists never read each other's works, and that the only object in writing a book is a proof of earnestness."
Read quote
6 likes
"Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss."
Read quote
6 likes
"All I ever wanted to do was write songs and get on a bus and go play them for people."
Read quote
6 likes
"Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig."
Read quote
6 likes
"The only way I've been able to stay informed without letting fury rule my life is to channel my rage into something that ultimately feels like love to me. The place I do that the best is in my writing. That's where I feel like I can tap into the power of story and maybe bring something good into the world."
Read quote
6 likes
"With fiction, it could be about anything. It just has to be good writing, like Maria Semple's "Where'd You Go, Bernadette," which I read recently. I want to forget I have a book in my hand."
Read quote
6 likes
"I don't write jokes first. I write down topics. I think of what I want to talk about, and then I write the jokes - they don't write me... And even if you don't think it's funny, you won't think it's boring. You might disagree, but you'll listen. And maybe even laugh as you disagree."
Read quote
6 likes
"The thing I try to get across to the writers - and I do a lot of writing, too - is that when I do stand-up, nothing I talk about is funny. Everything is really sad and tragic and then I make it funny."
Read quote
6 likes
"I'm very happy by myself - I'm lucky in that way - if I've got enough to read and something to write about and a bit of alcohol for me to add an edge, not to dull it."
Read quote
6 likes
"Chomsky proceeds on the almost unthinkably subversive assumption that the United States should be judged by the same standards that it preaches (often at gunpoint) to other nations he is nearly the only person now writing who assumes a single standard of international morality not for rhetorical effect, but as a matter of habitual, practically instinctual conviction."
Read quote
6 likes
"Forget it. Never explain; never apologize. You can either write posthumously or you can't."
Read quote
6 likes
"When I went to Czechoslovakia under the old Communist regime one day in the '80s, I thought to myself whatever I do, whatever happens to me in Prague I'm not going to use the name Kafka, I'm just not going to do it. I won't do it; it's so easy, everyone else does, I'm not going to. I'll write the first non-Kafka mentioning piece."
Read quote
6 likes
"Writers are too neurotic to ever be happy."
Read quote
6 likes
"Painting and writing are solitary arts."
Read quote
6 likes