Usually I start with a beat, I start making a beat, and my producer side is making the beat. And on a good day, my rapper side will jump in and start the writing process – maybe come up with a hook or start a verse. Sometimes it just happens like that. A song like ‚Lights Please‘ happens like that.
J. ColeMy favorite literary heroine is Jo March. It is hard to overstate what she meant to a small, plain girl called Jo, who had a hot temper and a burning ambition to be a writer.
J. K. RowlingAnd as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.
Stephen KingI start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.
Dr. SeussNone of my kids want to be actors. They are actually very interested in being musicians. I think they like the process of film from the outside. Mad is interested in editing. Pax loves music and deejaying.
Angelina JolieI always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You’re grateful for these different chances.
Ernest HemingwayStrangely, some songs you really don’t want to write.
David BowieI’m all self-taught. I never had a teacher. Even for English, and French, and German, I hardly went to school.
Karl LagerfeldI can only say the first thing that pops into my mind is I remember, years ago, seeing kind of a has-been country singer working – when I first moved to Nashville – in a bar in a Holiday Inn.
Jimmy Buffett‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.
Alice MunroAs far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.
Terry PratchettI only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.
Charles BukowskiI don’t think of myself as a metafictional writer at all. I think of myself as a classic writer, a realist writer, who tends to have flights of fancy at times, but nevertheless, my feet are mostly on the ground.
Paul AusterWe like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.
Stephen KingFor a creative writer possession of the ‚truth‘ is less important than emotional sincerity.
George OrwellI usually write lyrics first, and then when I get home or close to any kind of instrument, I usually make a melody for those lyrics.
AuroraI write the paragraph, then I’m crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometimes it’s almost illegible, and if I wait, I might not be able to read it the next day.
Paul AusterEvery dollar I made from DJing, I put into my videos, promotion – everything.
DJ KhaledI don’t go around thinking I’m Ray Bradbury all the time.
Ray BradburyI was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.
Paulo CoelhoWhen writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.
Ernest HemingwayWhat is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel JohnsonI like being a writer.
Terry PratchettThe reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.
Winston ChurchillStyle is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.
Robert FrostBut I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.
Stephen KingAlthough I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.
George LucasThe writer must be a participant in the scene… like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character.
Hunter S. ThompsonI’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.
Maya AngelouSome people are painters, and some are ballet dancers, and I’m a writer.
Alice WalkerI’ve often made revisions at that stage that turned out to be mistakes because I wasn’t really in the rhythm of the story anymore. I see a little bit of writing that doesn’t seem to be doing as much work as it should be doing, and right at the end, I will sort of rev it up. But when I finally read the story again, it seems a bit obtrusive.
Alice MunroThere are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.
Ernest HemingwayBrevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.
Hosea Ballou‚Unforgiven‘ is probably an example of a script that I liked right away but thought, ‚This is great, but I’d like to do this when I’m older.‘ So I stuck it in the drawer for ten years and then took it out.
Clint EastwoodI’m a writer. I don’t support any war. That’s my principle.
Haruki MurakamiA self-taught man usually has a poor teacher and a worse student.
Henny YoungmanI think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they’re good or there because they’re lucky.
Katharine HepburnTo write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.
F. Scott FitzgeraldI don’t really get into a big intellectual analysis of why I am going to do a certain script or not.
Clint EastwoodMy knowledge of electrical subjects was not acquired in a methodical manner but was picked up from such books as I could get hold of and from such experiments as I could make with my own hands.
Alexander Graham BellMy experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.
Taylor SwiftMaking a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated.
George LucasWhen I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical – one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.
Margaret AtwoodIf a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?
Steven WrightAs a writer, as a creator, I’m giving you my experiences. But just take what I give you. You ain’t got to pry beyond that.
Frank OceanI’m gonna be making records anyway, even if I had to sell ‚em out of the trunk of my car. I’m that kind of musician and singer.
Dolly PartonSome people are making music just for numbers and views.
Bad BunnyFaith Hill is a big role model.
Taylor SwiftThe making of music is profoundly affected by the market.
David ByrneWhen I’m stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.
David BowieEvery secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.
Virginia WoolfTo a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
Henry David ThoreauMy own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.
Terry PratchettI hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That’s the pitch. We’ll see.
Kurt VonnegutIn my early teens, I knew I wanted to do television production. I loved cameras, editing and producing, anything that had to do with television production. My friend had a production studio across town, and we’d go over there at night and shoot and edit. I produced my father’s televised service for 17 years.
Joel OsteenSo many writers don’t like to write… I like to write, and sometimes I’m afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don’t want to leave it. And as a result, I’ll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.
Harper LeeIt’s a weird thing when you make records. You try to hear it before you make it, so you walk into the studio with this idea of what you expect to happen, and that usually changes. That usually turns into something else, and that’s a good thing.
Dave GrohlI’ve been writing since I was really young, so I considered myself a writer for a really long time.
Lana Del ReySubstitute ‚damn‘ every time you’re inclined to write ‚very‘; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
Mark TwainI write all my sermons.
Joel Osteen