"What's interesting about songs where the writer is genuinely in love with words is that it's easy to read the lyrics like a poem."
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Writing quotes
Writing
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Writing quotes (page 274 of 1537)
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"This is also an execellent time to ask this question: Did I get lazy and go for a quick rhyme?"
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"When I began writing, it was a cosmic thing: Inspiration! Wham! Short spurts of time when I felt out of touch with reality, temporarily insane and the result: a song!"
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"I cannot get him to write or speak in real, solid earnest. I don't much mind it now, but if it be always so, what shall I do with the serious part of myself?"
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"I do think that something of the effect I have on people is to put everything on an edge where they're both infatuated with a kind of charmingness happening in the person or in the writing, and also flatly terrified by a revelation or acceptance of revelation that's almost happening, never quite totally happening."
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"When I began to be published, people got the idea that I should 'teach writing,' which I have no idea how to do and don't really believe in."
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"You are going to have to give and give and give, or there's no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver."
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"Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground - you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip. Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it's going to get. Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move."
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"You just have to keep getting out of your own way so that whatever it is that wants to be written can use you to write it."
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"The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion-not to look around and say, 'Look at yourselves, you idiots!,' but to say, 'This is who we are."
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"The real payoff is the writing itself, that a day when you have gotten your work done is a good day, that total dedication is the point."
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"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life Besides, perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force (these are words we are allowed to use in California)."
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"For some of us, good books and beautiful writing are our ultimate solace, even more comforting than exquisite food."
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"If you are hoping to find your self-worth and fulfillment in other peoples' opinion of your writing, you will never find it."
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"Write as if your parents are dead."
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"This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of--please forgive me--wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds."
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"Being a writer is part of a noble tradition, as is being a musician – the last egalitarian and open associations. No matter what happens in terms of fame and fortune, dedication to writing is a marching-step forward from where you were before, when you didn’t care about reaching out to the world, when you weren’t hoping to contribute, when you were just standing there doing some job into which you had fallen."
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"Don’t underestimate this gift of finding a place in the writing world: if you really work at describing creatively on paper the truth as you understand it, as you have experienced it, with the people or material who are in you, who are asking that you help them get written, you will come to a secret feeling of honor."
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"Needless to say, there was no one around remotely fitting the description of a normal person: I was at a writing conference."
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"There are a lot of us, some published, some not, who think the literary life is the loveliest one possible, this life of reading and writing and corresponding. We think this life is nearly ideal."
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