Writing Quotes

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

I don't think Capote loved Smith. But he did make a deep connection. It upset some people, because that had never been the approach to journalistic crime writing, to look into the mind of the killer.

These matters having been arranged, I had a temporary awning erected near the river, and was for three or four days busily employed writing an account of our journey for the Governor's information.

I was in lots of dodgy bands growing up and I always fancied myself in a band. But, you know, I was rubbish at writing music. So maybe one day I'll play a rock star, or punk rocker.

I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort.

It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.

Right now, I'm Writing song lyrics. Experimenting with a play. Toying with an idea for a documentary. I hope one of these will eventually be launched into the light of day.

Every writer I know has trouble writing.

Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit.

If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.

Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.

I didn't necessarily have a total idea when I was writing the movie of where everything was going. I just wanted to have really realistic dialogue and write like people I knew talked. I tried to keep it very real.

I've been writing about my boyhood, when I was a little kid back on my grandfather's farm where we didn't know about black widow spiders or all that stuff. But writing about that is so easy.

When I'm writing, I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience, rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived, you know?

I was totally absorbed in the real world, the politics, the history, the news, and I just couldn't find my way into the fictional world... When I finally could return to writing the novel, it was in fits and starts.

I'm pretty grounded on my own passion - writing books, you know, doing programs, speaking around the country. And I love what I do.

Writers know that sometimes things are there in the drawer for decades before they finally come out and you are capable of writing about them.

Lyrics are so important, I hate every second of writing them, but it's something I take great pride in when it's finished.

Yes, I am aware that I have become a caricature. I've thought about this. Conceptually, what I'd like to do is the equivalent of writing myself out of the script.

I am 82 years old. I imagine that I will keep on writing as long as anyone wants to keep reading.

I know I stand visibly onstage, but my function is still unseen, because I rarely see the immediate results of what I am saying or doing or writing.

For me, writing is a love-hate relationship.

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.

I had been writing for about twelve years. I knew pretty well how you could find things out, but I had never been trained in an academic way how to go about the research.

What I do believe is that there is always a relationship between writing and reading, a constant interplay between the writer on the one hand and the reader on the other.

I got that experience through dating dozens of men for six years after college, getting an entry level magazine job at 21, working in the fiction department at Good Housekeeping and then working as a fashion editor there as well as writing many articles for the magazine.

You know, it's absolutely connected to The Mollusk in that, it's what we're writing after The Mollusk. A lot of this stuff reminds me of things on The Mollusk.

I work fitfully, in hope rather than in expectation, invent methods which last a week, and fill notebooks with tiny, illegible writing which often defies my own attempts to decipher it.

For me, naming bands was the forerunner to really writing lyrics, because I work off titles.