Writing quotes
30.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"As an actor you get categorized by other people, but it's not like I arrange myself into comedy mode or serious mode. If it's good writing you just have to play it true - if it's funny, it's funny. But obviously you don't want it to be amusing if you're playing Hedda Gabler!"
"For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew."
"I write to find out what I didn't know I knew."
"Style is less the man than the way a man takes himself."
"Nearly everybody is looking for something brave to do. I don't know why people shouldn't write poetry. That's brave."
"I have just been to a city in the West, a city full of poets, a city they have made safe for poets. The whole city is so lovely that you do not have to write it up to make it poetry; it is ready-made for you. But, I don't know - the poetry written in that city might not seem like poetry if read outside of the city. It would be like the jokes made when you were drunk; you have to get drunk again to appreciate them."
"Poets need not go to Niagara to write about the force of falling water."
"How are we to write The Russian novel in America As long as life goes so unterribly?"
"In heaven we are all ghostwriters, if we write at all."
"I don't really analyze my stuff when I write. I write about stuff that I'm interested in, that I'm feeling at that particular time. When I stand back and look at the complete work, I might see themes that run through the whole film, but I'm not really conscious of it when I'm doing it."
"I think I'm always trying to challenge myself. I'm definitely going a new direction and trying to write more concisely, but that's the toughest part for me and I definitely think I'm growing in that way, which feels exciting."
"I never tried to write for other people. I liked people who had problems I might have, because we all have insecurities, regrets. I like heroes who were not 100-percent perfect, who things to take care of."
"It's hard not to be enthusiastic when you like what you're doing and I love what I do. I love writing stories, I love coming up with ideas for new projects and I love the people I work with, because I work with great writers and artists and directors and actors."
"No matter what you write, it's a matter of putting words in a certain order so that the reader will be interested in what you're writing."
"Ideally, anything one writes should have a social conscience: if you can write a story that thrills, and with a good message, that's the perfect type of a story."
"I never really am concerned about the political landscape of the day when I'm writing because no matter what it is, it will change. By the time my stories come out, it will have changed. So I never think much about that."
"I've written so many things over the years that I don't want to go back to being just a scriptwriter. I'm in what I consider to be the enviable position of all I have to do is come up with the idea and write an outline that makes it seem like it's a viable idea that will interest people, and then other people write the scripts -- and I become the executive producer or the producer, depending on how much involvement I have, and I get a creative credit and then move on to the next project."
"If nobody is looking for a story, and I have no reason to write a story, I would really much rather to do anything else because it's no fun writing stories, particularly not for me. I just do it in order to sell them and make a couple of bucks."
"I didn’t write 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' I’m not even sure who they all are. I can’t wait to see the movie."
"I hate to write, but I love to have written."
