"In our whole life melody the music is broken off here and there by rests, and we foolishly think we have come to the end of time. God sends a time of forced leisure, a time of sickness and disappointed plans, and makes a sudden pause in the hymns of our lives, and we lament that our voice must be silent and our part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of our Creator. Not without design does God write the music of our lives. Be it ours to learn the time and not be dismayed at the rests. If we look up, God will beat the time for us."
Writing quotes
Writing
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Writing quotes (page 183 of 1537)
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"There are no laws by which we can write Iliads."
"I'm incapable of writing without social commentary. I like to think that it's integrated and not really heavy handedly didactic."
"I get drunk writing words. I don't drink or do drugs, but I get so carried away with writing that I get inebriated from it."
"In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration."
"If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it-bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn't belong there."
"Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future."
"Any time something is written against me, I not only share the sentiment but feel I could do the job far better myself. Perhaps I should advise would-be enemies to send me their grievances beforehand, with full assurance that they will receive my every aid and support. I have even secretly longed to write, under a pen name, a merciless tirade against myself."
"I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as ‘The Masses’. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time."
"Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned."
"A friend said to me I'm like a walking New Yorker article. It's true! That's how I write. That's how I think."
"All my stuff is pretty seamless - like now, while I'm touring [Yesterday I Sang The Blues], today I'm going to go in the studio, I'm writing my next one. For me it's continual."
"I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are."
"Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader."
"I'm supposed to be taking time off. But I'm still writing and I have this Gap advert lined up."
"I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another."
"Writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy and freedom."
"If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?"
"I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects just need time, as I've learned over and over again. You've got to wait before you write about them."
"Without craft, art remains private. Without art, craft is merely hackwork."