How can any one paint who cannot grade colors? How can any one write poetry who has not learnt to hear and see?
I think anything that’s creative really takes my mind off whatever it is that I’m going through in my life. If you’re going through heartbreak, and you can write a song, it’s a wonderful win-win, because it takes your mind off the heartbreak, and you get to vent.
I don’t like to read things that people write about me. I’d rather read what kids have to say about me because it’s not their profession to do that.
I’m not going to be rockin’ n’ rollin’ when I’m 50 years old. But you can be in your prime on television, compose songs, or write a Broadway play when you’re 50.
I write because I have an innate need to. I write because I can’t do normal work. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it.
If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.
I think it goes back to my high school days. In computer class, the first assignment was to write a program to print the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead, I wrote a program that would steal passwords of students. My teacher gave me an A.
Anyone can write your own life story.
You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.
I’m a believer. I don’t go to church. I don’t belong to any particular religion, but I do believe in God. I couldn’t write what I write about and be creative without a certain form of belief.
I knew it would be painful to write a memoir.
Sure, I am funny and have a good sense of humor. Mostly, though, I just tell the truth. The internal dialogue people have in their heads – I just write it.
All I can guess is that when I write, I forget that it’s not real. I’m living the story, and I think people can read that sincerity about the characters. They are real to me while I’m writing them, and I think that makes them real to the readers as well.
It’s hard to be in the limelight and write songs that cater to fans that have expectations of you. We just want to write songs that we love, but all the different people with different ideas coming in make it difficult. We have to ask ourselves if we’re writing for the most important people: the fans.
For this purpose I determined to keep an account of the voyage, and to write down punctually every thing we performed or saw from day to day, as will hereafter appear.
The things I write about are the things that I am passionate about, interested in, and fighting for in my life.
You write to become immortal, or because the piano happens to be open, or you’ve looked into a pair of beautiful eyes.
Today I must write a paragraph or a page better than I did yesterday.
I’ve always measured a good day as one where I can read, write, and run.
I’m crazy about ‘Breaking Bad,’ but I wouldn’t know how to write an episode of it.
A poet ought not to pick nature’s pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.
With ‘New Rose Hotel,’ I knew that I was getting paid a $100,000 fee to write, produce, and direct, and that’s all I was going to get.
On the ‘Star,’ you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. This is useful to anyone. Newspaper work will not harm a young writer and could help him if he gets out of it in time.
To write our constitution is for the past, the present, and the future to come together all at once in one single motion, in one single heave, one single cry. For we correct the errors of the past and chart a new course for the future, based on the experience of the present.
I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is – I don’t even want to say that it’s mine, because it’s yours.
Write out the story – rapidly, fluently, and not too critically – following the second or narrative-order synopsis. Change incidents and plot whenever the developing process seems to suggest such change, never being bound by any previous design.
Part of the problem with America is that letting go of emotions is viewed as a weakness, but it’s my strength. That enabled me to write my songs.
If I want to be alone, some place I can write, I can read, I can pray, I can cry, I can do whatever I want – I go to the bathroom.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
I’m not a risk-taker; that’s probably why I write – because when you’re easily bored, but you don’t like taking risks, you end up doing it all in your head.
It seems to me that after the second world war, Beckett finally realized he had something to write about.
I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.
Early British pop was helped tremendously by the writing of Bob Dylan who had proved you could write about political and quite controversial subjects. Certainly what we did followed on from what was happening with the angry young men in the theatre.
Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
I write because it’s my way of finding cool ideas, thinking through hard problems and things I don’t understand, and getting better at something.
I don’t feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it’s so old-fashioned. I could write a whole novel on scrap paper, scribbles and things. I keep looking at it and something develops. For me, using a word processor would mean staring at a screen for too many hours.
A poet could write volumes about diners, because they’re so beautiful. They’re brightly lit, with chrome and booths and Naugahyde and great waitresses. Now, it might not be so great in the health department, but I think diner food is really worth experiencing periodically.
What I am going to write is the last of what I have to say. I will say that literature is the only consciousness we possess and that its role as consciousness must inform us of our ability to comprehend the hideous danger of nuclear power.
On a good day I write, all day.
When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.
I don’t just write hits for myself, or for other artists, or to just be writing it. I write it because I was born to do this. I was given this gift, and I’m making the most of my opportunity.
You have to write what you know.
Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.
I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss – you can’t do it alone.
Write whatever you like!
I like writing books. I’d rather be at home with my wife. I can write, take a break, come out, have a glass of tea, give my wife a kiss, and go back in and write some more. It’s not so bad. I am really lucky.
To me there’s no creativity without boundaries. If you’re gonna write a sonnet, it’s 14 lines, so it’s solving the problem within the container.
I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.
I’m not sure if they do this in the States, but in Korea, until high school, on your graduation diploma there’s a line that states your future goal. Kids write ‘president’ or ‘astronaut,’ or whatever. I always wrote ‘singer.’
I’m half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That’s why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I’ve seen so many.
I don’t have to go into outer space to write about an astronaut.
First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And, ever since, it grew more clean and white.
I can’t write my life story without Emmitt and Troy. They can’t write their life stories without me. We’re tied together forever. This is a day to remember for the rest of our lives.
People who write about spring training not being necessary have never tried to throw a baseball.
Some creative writing programs seem evil, but my experience at Irvine was totally the opposite, where I feel like they were really good at focusing in on each writers voice and setting. When I felt like I was obligated to write a story that was more typical, no one really liked it.
Don’t write anything you can phone. Don’t phone anything you can talk. Don’t talk anything you can whisper. Don’t whisper anything you can smile. Don’t smile anything you can nod. Don’t nod anything you can wink.
I use the setting of a small rural Norwegian community – the kind of place that I know so intimately. I could never write a novel set in a big city, because, frankly, I don’t know what it would be like.
