Writing Quotes

A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.

I did not think that I was angry, but clearly anger was reflected in my writing. I did not think that I had been affected emotionally, but it was clear from my writing that I was still very emotional about the trial some six months after it ended.

If I lose, then I have to accept that my way of writing books is not the way society says it's okay to write.

There isn't a dearth of it, but I will confess that it's harder for me to find songs on which I'm willing to invest anything from ten to fifteen hours writing an arrangement than it was in times past.

I listen to music constantly while writing.

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

A good comedy's very hard to make, so good comic writing I really enjoy.

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.

I wasn't interested in writing music that wasn't beautiful for me to listen to.

I was pretty dead set against ever writing an academic novel. It's always been my view that there are already more than enough academic novels and that most of them aren't any good. Most of them are self-conscious and bitter, the work of people who want to settle grudges.

At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

Shake was a dramatist of note; He lived by writing things to quote.

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.

I consider my films to be poems that are all as personal as my writing and as hand-made.

There are some different things I'm writing and developing, but I don't know where they'll go. They're fun stuff that I would be in and are written in my voice, for me.

The music I listen to while writing is really scene-specific. It's just a great motivator, a way to put myself in the mood.

I should add that it is open to debate whether what we call the writing of history these days is truly scientific.

Writing good ads is easy when you have something to say.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

I also don't have organized religion on Pern. I figured - since there were four holy wars going on at the time of writing - that religion was one problem Pern didn't need.

An hour or two spent in writing from dictation, another hour or two in reading aloud, a little geography and a little history and a little physics made the day pass busily.

I chose philosophy because it sounded like something I ought to be interested in. I didn't know anything about it, I didn't even know what it was talking about. What I really spent my time doing in those years was writing short stories. There were all sorts of interesting courses, but what I really wanted to do was make stories one way or another.

I had never read Upton Sinclair. I didn't read 'The Jungle' in high school or anything like that. But it's pretty terrific writing.

I don't really need to stand out, there's room for everyone. Although I haven't built a niche yet, I'm just writing love songs.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Even the people who have had success and made money writing these books of fiction seem to feel the need to pretend it's no big deal, or part of a natural progression from poetry to fiction, but often it's really just about the money, the perceived prestige.

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

The use of criticism, in periodical writing, is to sift, not to stamp a work.

I have learned many things in the 30 years that I have been writing.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.