"It's all about the music. For me, that's truly what I live for. Just music constantly. Always listening to, writing, or playing music. That's definitely me."
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Writing quotes
Writing
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Writing quotes (page 222 of 1537)
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"Write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever."
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"I always write the end of everything first. I always write the last chapters of my books before I write the beginning....Then I go back to the beginning. I mean, it's always nice to know where you're going is my theory."
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"I also write the last paragraph or page of a story first. That way I always know what I'm working towards."
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"Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don't put them on paper."
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"I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon."
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"I got this idea of doing a really serious big work-it would be precisely like a novel, with a single difference: Every word of it would be true from beginning to end."
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"I don't want you to write about what you know, because you don't know anything. I don't want to hear about your boyfriend or your grandma... I'm getting a little tired of 'my life story as fiction'. Please don't tell me about your little life - is there nothing larger? More important?"
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"I have a lot of respect for readers because I'm a reader. That's how I got into writing."
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"I don't wait to be struck by lightning and I don't need certain slants of light in order to be able to write."
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"The formula for creative writing in high school or college is write what you know."
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"Sex is difficult to write about because it's just not sexy enough. The only way to write about it is not to write much. Let the reader bring his own sexuality into the text. A writer I usually admire has written about sex in the most off-putting way. There is just too much information."
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"Usually I try to be there by six. Everything has been taken off the walls so that there's nothing to arrest my sight. On the bed I have Roget's Thesaurus, a dictionary, a Bible, and a deck of playing cards."
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"What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn."
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"I think one of the reasons I'm so thrilled with writing is because it is an act of reading for me at the same time, which is why my revisions are so sustained."
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"One of the things I like about the computer that I use is that I can write a program on it or I can download a program on to it and run it. That's kind of important to me, and that's also kind of important to the whole future of the internet... obviously a closed platform is a serious brake on innovation."
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"I have withdrawn not only from men, but from affairs, especially my own affairs; I am working for later generations, writing down some ideas that may be of assistance to them."
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"To write you had to read so I backed into reading."
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"When I write a novel I start each morning by reading for 20 minutes."
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"People are going to write and say things you don't like. They're going to take things out of context. What are you going to do? You can't let it destroy your life. That's their problem. They're going to go on and not be respected for what they do. Just worry about what you do. You have to make up your mind. You also have to be prepared for fallout. You have to accept the industry you're in."
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