Writing quotes
30.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"The one thing a writer has to have is a pencil and some paper. That's enough, so long as she knows that she and she alone is in charge of that pencil, and responsible, she and she alone, for what it writes on that paper."
"I do try to separate my personal activism - showing up at a demonstration or something - from what I write."
"The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of literature from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order."
"If the breaking news event has something to do with young people, specifically with MTV's audience, there was a higher chance that I would actually go cover it with a television camera instead of just write the story myself and read it on the air."
"We who preach and write, do so in a manner different from which the Scriptures have been written. We write while we make progress.We learn something new every day. We speak as we still knock for understanding...If anyone criticizes me when I have said what is right, he does me an injustice. But I would be more angry with the one who praises me and takes what I have written for Gospel truth than I would be with the one who criticizes me unfairly."
"An initial impulse of mine was to portray the way in which a city is impacted by war. But this is vague, no? After all, how do you actually have an entire city - or country, for that matter - be a character a reader can follow? One way is by making it smaller and personalizing it, by writing specifically about the citizens and the way they contend with the reality, even minutiae, especially minutiae, of their lives."
"The discipline of the writer is to learn to be still and listen to what his subject has to tell him."
"[Writing is] largely a matter of application and hard work, or writing and rewriting endlessly until you are satisfied that you have said what you want to say as clearly and simply as possible. For me that usually means many, many revisions."
"This was totally influenced by me and the direction that I am writing about and the stuff that I am writing about. There is just no way that you can be as intense as what I have been through in my life over a drum beat machine, sample, or loop; it's just not going to happen."
"It's very selfish when I write. I'm not aware, ever, of writing for another person; I'm not even really aware of writing for myself."
"If they had said my writing wasn't good enough, fair enough, that's an opinion. But to say it's too complex is to insult the intelligence of the so-called young."
"Im writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and Im very greedy, and I really enjoy it!"
"I dedicate this novel to Gala, who was constantly by my side while I was writing it, who was the good fairy of my equilibrium, who banished the salamanders of my doubts and strengthened the lions of certainties."
"Don't worry about never having time to write. Just write what you can in the time you do have and give yourself a big clap on the back, followed by a double latte and a blueberry muffin."
"Before I started writing my album, I didn't tell people many things. But because I'm going to the studio every day and telling strangers my deepest and darkest emotions, it's made me more of an open book. I wear my heart on my sleeve a lot more now than I did."
"If, when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but writing . . . then you are a writer."
"I suspect that all the agony that goes into writing is borne precisely because the writer longs for acceptance-but it must be acceptance on his own terms."
"But no matter what love throws at you, you have to believe in it. You have ot believe in love stories and prince charmings and happily ever after. That's why I write these songs. Because I think love is FEARLESS."
"I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I'd just write."
"I find it relatively easy to keep my clothes on because I don't really feel like taking them off. It's not an urge I have. For me, 'risky' is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is. That's putting myself out there, maybe even more than taking my shirt off."
