writing quotes

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.

I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream – I was surprised to find it happening.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I’ve seen on some of the songs that I’ve written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.

If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.

I was terrible at straight items. When I wrote obituaries, my mother said the only thing I ever got them to do was die in alphabetical order.

There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn’t bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

Money is an unavoidable consequence, but it isn’t the reason I write; if it was, I wouldn’t have written any of the YA books, because advances in that field are small compared to what I’d got now for an ‚adult‘ DW.

I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen, because I pride myself on that.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

I don’t go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it’s contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.

As I read more and more – and it was not all verse, by any means – my love for the real life of words increased until I knew that I must live with them and in them, always. I knew, in fact, that I must be a writer of words, and nothing else.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

I wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose.

Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

I’ve never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.

One aspect of appellate judging is we have to give reasons for all of our decisions. And when you sit down and try to write it out, sometimes you find that your first judgment wasn’t the right one.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

I had my jazz club and I had enough money. So I didn’t have to write for my living.

You know, as a writer, I’m more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.

I could speak three languages when I was six, and when I went to school, I only liked to read and sketch. At five, I could write and everything.

And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

It seemed like a very small possibility for me to become an artist. I didn’t have the need to be on the stage; I didn’t feel the need to be heard. I just needed to write.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

You can stroke people with words.

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don’t think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

It’s funny because I’ve made a living off of words, but words get in the way of what you really want to say.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

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

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

I’m looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear, and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses, he will endure or be forgotten.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

Writing is like a ‚lust,‘ or like ‚scratching when you itch.‘ Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I, for one, must get it out.

The first story I finished was when I was six years old.

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write.