creative writing quotes

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

For me, a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

For a creative writer possession of the ‚truth‘ is less important than emotional sincerity.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

When I say that basically writing is a hard hustle, I don’t mean that it is a bad life, if one can get away with it. It’s the miracle of miracles to make a living by the typer.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

Every story has its demands.

When they speak, dead frogs fall out of their mouths.

It’s not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, ‚Read,‘ but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, ‚Don’t read, don’t think, just write,‘ and the result could be a mountain of drivel.

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.

When asked, ‚How do you write?‘ I invariably answer, ‚one word at a time.‘

When I write, I try to become different characters.

I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write.

I started out as a poet. I’ve always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.