Write Quotes

Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Write Quotes from famous persons: Richard Wagner, David Bowie, Benjamin Britten, George R. R. Martin, Molly Qerim. The wide variety of quotes available makes it possible to find a quote to suit your needs. You’ve likely heard some of the Write Quotes before, but that’s because they truly are great.

1
I write music with an exclamation point!

I write music with an exclamation point!
2
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.
3
The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.
Benjamin Britten
4
As Faulkner says, all of us have the capacity in us for great good and for great evil, for love but also for hate. I wanted to write those kinds of complex character in a fantasy, and not just have all the good people get together to fight the bad guy.
5
I could go right now and work for a non-profit organization, but I have a passion for sports, and I love to write and speak.
6
I write music. I’m in a band.
7
I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.
8
Everything was a song. Every conversation, every personal hurt, every observance of people in stress, happiness and love… if you could feel it, I could feel it. And I could write a song about it.
9
I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.
10
I am bipolar, and I am proud. And that is why I wanted to write a book. To shine a light on mental illness, to be vulnerable about the days I let it take control and paid dearly for it, and to tell anyone fighting a similar battle: You are not alone. You are not broken.
11
I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind – and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.
12
I can write with authority only about what I know well, which means that I end up using surface details of my own life in my fiction.
13
There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call ‘the breaks.’ In order for a writer to succeed, I suggest three things – read and write – and wait.
Countee Cullen
14
I’m completely honest with everyone I deal with. I genuinely care about people. I want to see people succeed and be the best that they can be. So, I wanted to write a motivational book about life, love and the pursuit of happiness.
15
My sister Tiffany told me years ago, ‘You can never write about me.’ Then she called six months ago and said she wanted to be in a story. She was worried people thought I didn’t like her.
16
I think my dyslexia was a vital part of my development because my inability to read and write meant that I had to find knowledge elsewhere so I looked to the cinema.
17
Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away.
18
Don’t try to guess what it is people want and give it to them. Don’t ask for a show of hands. Try your best to write what you like, what you think your friends would like and what you think your father would like and then cross your fingers… The most valuable thing you have is your own voice.
19
Never regret what you don’t write.
20
If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.
21
I have to be inspired to write a song.
22
When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.
23
I don’t set out to write something. I more just write, and later on, I discover what it’s about.
24
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.
Lorne Michaels
25
I think I am a tough grader, because I feel like it’s my job to teach them to write well. I hope my students say I’m a fair teacher.
26
I don’t listen to what people say about me and I don’t read what they write about me. People can compare me to anyone they want to, but I’m not going to worry about it.
27
A good writer should be able to write comedic work that made you laugh, and scary stuff that made you scared, and fantasy or science fiction that imbued you with a sense of wonder, and mainstream journalism that gave you clear and concise information in a way that you wanted it.
28
I love writing two narratives! I think concurrent storylines are my favorite way to write a book.
29
Forget market or publishers or whatever. Just write with fire and joy, and in my own experience, those are the stories of mine people have wanted to read.
30
It’s easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.
31
We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.
32
I write about my region, the countryside in which I grew up.
Mo Yan
33
Stories lie deep in our souls. Stories lie so deep at the bottom of our hearts that they can bring people together on the deepest level. When I write a novel, I go into such depths.
34
When you die, others who think they know you, will concoct things about you… Better pick up a pen and write it yourself, for you know yourself best.
35
When asked, ‘How do you write?’ I invariably answer, ‘one word at a time.’
36
I love rhymes; I love to write a poem about New York and rhyme ‘oysters’ with ‘The Cloisters.’ And ‘The lady from Knoxville who bought her brassieres by the boxful.’ I just feel a sort of small triumph.
37
You won’t find me at parties or the openings of movies and I don’t hang around with David Beckham and Kanye West. So the paparazzi leave me alone, which means that I can do my shows, write music and then live a normal life.
38
Mrs. Miniver was an ordinary middle-class English housewife, a character created by Jan Struther when she was commissioned by the ‘Times of London‘ to write a weekly ‘cheer-up’ article in 1937.
39
You have to write a good score that you feel good about. At least, you’re supposed to. But, if the director hates it, it ain’t going to be in the movie!
40
I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.
41
Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts – the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.
42
If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody’s mercy, then you will probably write melodrama.
Lillian Hellman
43
I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.
44
If we tried to write about politics, you’d realize that we’re all a bunch of idiots.
45
I write… sonnets… and writing sonnets is boring. You have to find rhymes; you have to write hendecasyllables; so after a while, I get bored and my drawer is overflowing with unfinished short poems.
46
One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.
47
I’m not angry; I write about angry characters. When I’m doing that, I’m happy. Just like when I’m writing about Mickey Sabbath being lustful, I’m not feeling lustful; I’m happy.
48
Many people – and I think I am one of them – are more productive when they’ve had a little to drink. I find if I drink two or three brandies, I’m far better able to write.
49
I’d like to write some songs that are so good that nobody understands them. Not even myself.
Townes Van Zandt
50
I hated being a novelist when I was 20 – I had nothing to write about.
51
A writer doesn’t write about just anything. He writes about things he has an affinity for.
52
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.
53
It’s easy for me to write a horror movie about real stuff because my mind is always going there anyway.
54
It’s never easy to write a song. It’s the most difficult thing I do.
55
As a kid, I said, ‘I want to write for movies.’ When I finally had that opportunity it was like I was able to exhale. ‘Wow, I’m finally doing this for real.’
Cliff Burton
56
I don’t have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don’t know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.
Flannery O’Connor
57
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
58
Talent is like a faucet, while it is open, one must write.
59
Yeah, we went to England to do a show and I got off the plane and I couldn’t write my name or hold my hand up.
Johnny Winter
60
If you’re going to write about war, which my books are about, wars are nasty things. I think it’s sort of a cheap, easy way out to write a war story in which no one ultimately dies.
61
It’s usually a big kind of vent of frustration or anger or sadness that puts me in the right frame of mind to write. It’s such a cliche to say that artists write when they’re down, but it’s true for me. It’s a relief to get out what’s eating away at my heart or my soul or my head.
62
The happy mediumtruth in all things – is no longer either known or valued; to gain applause, one must write things so inane that they might be played on barrel-organs, or so unintelligible that no rational being can comprehend them, though on that very account, they are likely to please.
63
People who write about spring training not being necessary have never tried to throw a baseball.
Sandy Koufax
64
I’m still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.
65
Never write on a subject until you have read yourself full of it.
66
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.
67
I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.
68
It would not be amiss for the novice to write the last paragraph of his story first, once a synopsis of the plot has been carefully prepared – as it always should be.
69
The act of song writing and recording became one and the same to me; because I essentially recorded everything I did from the day I began trying to write songs. I’ve always had a lot to say. I’d always written poems.
Adam Goldberg
70
I’m crazy about ‘Breaking Bad,’ but I wouldn’t know how to write an episode of it.
71
Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.
72
There has been a great laziness in my soul. Lots of days I could write songs, but I could also take my $400 and play the slot machines at the riverfront casino.
73
Everyone thinks they’re going to write one book of poems or one novel.
74
I don’t write beautifully – I just write reports about our condition.
75
I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.
76
While I write this letter, I have a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other.
Boyle Roche
77
I was diagnosed with dyslexia in third grade and had gone to a special school for it and then left the school. I’d learned to read and write, but it was still a real struggle for me, as it is to this day.
78
Your feelings so are important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you’re heartbroken, but tomorrow you’ll be in love again.
79
What you write on the page has nothing to do with when you’re on set. When you’re on set, it has nothing to do with when you’re in the editing room. And when you’re in the editing room, it has nothing to do with the final movie. You just have to let it go.
Lori Petty
80
I don’t understand why, in my work, writing is always so dangerous. It’s very destructive. People who write books are destroyers.
81
Fans are really important for me. And if they take pains to write me, it’s the minimum that I answer myself.
82
A lot of the time when I write about the person that I love, I feel like I’m writing about New York.
83
If I ask you to write down the last 4 digits of your social security number, and then take you out to lunch and ask you how many dentists there are in Manhattan, there’s going to be a high correlation between those two numbers. What happens is that the number psychologically makes you feel confident.
84
Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.
85
No one ever gets to write their ending, write their final script.
86
I wanted to write about extended family systems. You have people you can fall back on, and it’s good. But what if you don’t fit into what is expected of you?
87
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.
88
If I am constantly working, my relationships fail. So at least now I can have enough time to write a happy record. And be in love and be happy. And then I don’t know what I’ll do. Get married. Have some kids. Plant a nice vegetable patch.
89
When I write a tune – and it’s been like this for many years – I always hear in the back of my head some sort of vague, orchestrated, fully fleshed-out big-band version of the song with other parts going on.
John Scofield
90
We’re in a world where there’s famine and hunger and people are dodging bullets and having their nails pulled out in dungeons so it’s very hard for me to place any high value on the work that I do to write a song. Yeah, I work hard but compared to what?
91
When I was a kid, I figured I would be a physicist when I grew up, and then I would write science fiction on the side. The physicist thing didn’t pan out, but writing science fiction on the side did.
Ted Chiang
92
I try to have a balanced diet. I try to write down everything that I eat.
93
Although I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.
94
The more I draw and write, the more I realise that accidents are a necessary part of any creative act, much more so than logic or wisdom. Sometimes a mistake is the only way of arriving at an original concept, and the history of successful inventions is full of mishaps, serendipity and unintended results.
95
It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.
96
I write in Urdu and everything is written by my hand.
97
I think I’ve got my business notions and my sense for that sort of thing from my dad. My dad never had a chance to go to school. He couldn’t read and write. But he was so smart. He was just one of those people that could just make the most of anything and everything that he had to work with.
98
To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.
99
Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.
Paul Celan
100
Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.
Frank Zappa
101
Whenever I write anything, I do sing to it, to try and make sure it’s interesting or compelling to sing to. I’ve gotten in the habit of sharing that with other, more charismatic vocalists.
102
‘Chandelier’ took, like, four minutes to write the chords, then, like, 12-15 minutes to write the lyrics. Probably 10 or 15 minutes to cut the vocals.
103
I write to understand as much as to be understood.
104
I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.
105
My friend Akshay Upadhyay and I used to write poetry and read out to each other.
106
Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass.
107
If you want to be a professional writer then you need to write consistently. Inspiration strikes about once every blue moon which, for me, is once every two and a half to three months, which is when I’ll get really and truly inspired about something.
Christopher Paolini
108
I don’t write for children. I write and someone says it’s for children.
109
I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.
110
Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.
Hector Berlioz
111
I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. That’s the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about.
112
I write in a very strange way. Things are very fragmentary for a very long time, and then they come together very quickly near the end of the process.
113
I don’t believe in writer’s block. I’ll get stuck, but being stuck, I’ll still write a verse. If you know where you’re going, you can always start from there and work your way back.
114
I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.
115
The only real reason to write professionally is that you love it enough.
Sloan Wilson
116
What I’m trying to do is to write a story. If you take something from it, that’s wonderful; if you don’t, that’s wonderful as well.
117
I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.
118
I was 16 and got my boyfriend‘s name tattooed on me. Don’t do it. ‘Cause it hurts. The moment you do it, the next month, the next year, you’ll be broken up – trust me – and cover-ups hurt. You can show your love in other ways. Ink is not it. Write it on a piece of paper and mail it to him.
119
It was my 16th birthday – my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do – write songs and sing them to people.
120
For a writer, they say write what you know. As a performer, you find it in yourself, in your heart. You relate to the character. You try to live it, try to have it be real for you.
121
I think that if writers are tempted to do other things, they ought to go do other things. They should not write if they don’t feel like it. I say this as a competitor. I am not interested in encouraging people who are in competition with me.
122
History belongs to everyone. I don’t think you have to give up scholarly standards. But I also don’t think you want to write something that is impenetrable. You try as hard as you can to be readable.
123
‘The One-Eyed Man’ is a novel that was one I never intended to write.
124
Childfree women are actually great assets to the planet. Our carbon footprint is smaller than a mom’s! And we have enough money to write checks to organizations that help kids get vaccinations, vitamins, and educations yet have plenty of free time to advise your daughter that one day she will regret piercing her lip.
125
I know some people might think it oddunworthy even – for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people’s poet so I write for the people.
126
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
127
I want to write. I want to direct. I want to produce – I want to inhabit what I think it means to fully be an artist.
128
You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.
129
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.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
130
If you have goals or aims in life, write them down. If you look at your goals every day, then it will encourage you to try your best in all you do, be focused, and stay determined.
131
I wanted to write about racism and xenophobia in 21st Century England and Ireland, but I wanted to do it in an exciting way so that I could reach more readers. Zombies seemed like a good way to do that.
Darren Shan
132
A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.
133
Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.
134
I don’t listen to anything when I’m writing. I need total quiet, which is astounding, given that I spent years working for a newspaper and having to write features surrounded by ringing phones and people shouting.
135
I write the occasional poem. I think my dabbling in poetry makes me better at screenplays. Poetry teaches the value of condensing, the importance of talking in a few words.
136
I play a little guitar, write a few tunes, make a few movies, but none of that’s really me. The real me is something else.
137
Televison is time bound. Whereas a movie has time. You can’t write a script for television and keep it for one year.
138
It was the winter of war, in 1939. It felt completely pointless to try to create pictures… I suddenly felt an urge to write down something that was to begin with ‘Once upon a time.’
Tove Jansson
139
You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.
140
I write and rewrite and rewrite and write and like to turn in what I think is finished work.
Gay Talese
141
When I lived in a little flat in Pimlico in 1981, I’d write in the hallway. As you walked in, there was a tiny little recess type thing, hardly a hallway, really, and I’d sit there writing songs with my guitar.
142
I always work on the principle that if my heart and my head are together on an issue, write it, say it.
143
A man who wants time to read and write must let the grass grow long.
Sloan Wilson
144
I tend to write about my anxieties – it’s what I’m afraid will happen. And I write a story working it out.
145
The main thing is to make history, not to write it.
Otto von Bismarck
146
Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.
147
Writing a play to get to Broadway and have a national tour is a sure way to write a terrible, terrible play.
148
Most of my teachers wanted to send me to the principal‘s office. But my fourth-grade teacher once put her arms around me and said, ‘You sure write well.’ And I’ve had good penmanship until this day. She was the only one who ever said anything nice to me. That’s the kind of motivation that students need.
149
I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.
150
The turning point was when I hit my 30th birthday. I thought, if really want to write, it’s time to start. I picked up the book How to Write a Novel in 90 Days. The author said to just write three pages a day, and I figured, I can do this. I never got past Page 3 of that book.
151
John Wells let me write a couple of West Wings, which was an incredible gift. I loved it once I got past the brain injury part of it, and so I’m working on a couple of things that are far from fruition, but what I want to pursue.
152
I think what happens is you write how you grew up. And I was born on the prairie, and so everything is kind of spare on the prairie. And so I’m just used to writing in that way. ‘Sarah, Plain and Tall’ was that way. And most of my fiction is. I like writing small pieces. Somehow it just suits me.
Patricia MacLachlan
153
Success for me is to write what I think is a good song. When I’m pleased with it, that, for me, is a magical moment. I never lost that buzz.
154
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.
155
I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second.
156
Well, I think every film student goes into film school thinking they want to write and direct their own movies, and they don’t realize how much goes into it, and what a process it is.
157
Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read.
Ross Perot
158
I want to host and write a ‘Sex in the City’-type travel show.
159
Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.
160
To write about the hijab is to step into a minefield. Even among those who share my cultural and faith background, opinions veer from those who despise it as a symbol of backwardness to those for whom religion begins and ends with that piece of cloth.
161
There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.
162
I would say a good leader brings results. A great leader writes a new story, it’s different. Obviously a new story has to incorporate a lot of results. But a story is a chapter in the life of a company that people want to write and want to remember.
163
When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.
164
When ‘If God Was a Banker’ became a success, it changed my entire perspective. I wanted to write more and wanted to be lot more successful as a writer.
165
Every time I write a song my approach changes.
166
Honest honey, I feel like crying every time I sit down to write you a letter… I am so unlucky.
Eddie Slovik
167
I was about to walk on stage at the Kansas Speedway – I was playing a NASCAR race – and I said to Scooter Carusoe, who was standing side stage, ‘I want to write a song called ‘Wanna Be That Song.’ Then I put my earphones back in and walked right out on stage.
168
People imagine that there are rituals, like lighting candles or sacrificing chickens. They really just want to know what the magic formula is for writing. I inevitably disappoint them by saying you just put your butt in the chair, and you write 500 words a day, and then you get up and repeat it the next morning.
169
My parents were very supportive and always encouraged us. My father was a gentle, nice man. My mother was quite a colorful character and a keen reader who encouraged me to write.
170
I was lucky because my mum was a teacher and showed me how to read and write. But most importantly, she encouraged me to use my imagination.
Darren Shan
171
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.
172
People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that’s a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated.
Lucille Clifton
173
I’ve started getting acclimated to writing on the road and on the spot. I just let whatever I feel at the time come out, instead of really sitting there and taking days to write just one song.
174
I don’t write for an auditorium full of people. I don’t write for the microphone; I write for the page.
175
Respect the language in which you write. Be kind, develop good vocabulary, and be creative in writing beautiful sentences. Your prose should be your poetry when you write.
176
It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do.
Benito Mussolini
177
My kind publishers, Toby Mundy and Margaret Stead of Atlantic Books, have commissioned me to write the life of Queen Victoria.
178
A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
179
I have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.
180
My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.
181
Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.
182
I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I’m conscious of the mainstream without selling out.
183
Well, as a songwriter, it’s really dangerous to use the word love in a song. It’s a word that has been used in songs so many millions of times before, and it’s the most popular topic to ever write about.
184
Write when drunk. Edit when sober. Marketing is the hangover.
185
‘The Beatles‘ did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.
186
A lot of the songs I’ve recorded are songs I write.
187
Knitting is very conducive to thought. It is nice to knit a while, put down the needles, write a while, then take up the sock again.
188
Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
189
Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped.
Lillian Hellman
190
Somebody said to me, ‘But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.’ That’s a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, ‘Now, let’s write a swimming pool.’
191
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.
Earl Long
192
I don’t think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That’s why people write novels.
193
If you write a book about a bygone period that lies east of the Mississippi River, then it’s a historical novel. If it’s west of the Mississippi, it’s a western, a different category. There’s no sense to it.
194
Of course, relative citation frequencies are no measure of relative importance. Who has not aspired to write a paper so fundamental that very soon it is known to everyone and cited by no one?
Abraham Pais
195
I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write.
196
Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
197
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.
198
I have suffered most of the things I write about – or my friends have.
199
I write what I see; I paint what I am.
Etel Adnan
200
I remember thinking during those times that I wanted to write in a way where there are no rules.
201
I don’t think anyone should write their autobiography until after they’re dead.
202
I write about my feelings, things that happen in my life and experiences.
Aaron Carter
203
I write fiction and I’m told it’s autobiography, I write autobiography and I’m told it’s fiction, so since I’m so dim and they’re so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn’t.
204
Supermodel‘ was a hard record for me; it was an emotional record to write. I was purging a lot of stuff with that album, and I think the one thing I didn’t really consider, that I’d be supporting it for two years and living in that state of mind every night.
205
If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.
206
I write in American slang.
Norman Spinrad
207
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.
208
The broken heart on my right finger represents me before I figured out who I was, and the full heart on my left is because I’m left-handed, I use that to write my music, and my music helped me obtain my direction in life.
209
I always try to write a song, I never just want to write a record.
210
I may not be poetic but i’d love to write songs that convey my true feelings.
211
Mostly, I just like to write music and spend time with my family and friends and jam.
Aubrey Peeples
212
What you write sets the visual style for the film. But you have to compromise your style in your first few films before people let you do what you want to do.
213
Always write angry letters to your enemies. Never mail them.
214
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.
215
I need complete silence when I write.
216
It seems to me that after the second world war, Beckett finally realized he had something to write about.
217
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.
Future
218
Sometimes I write from the point of view of characters whom I would dislike as people, not as a perverse exercise, but because this cracks the story open and makes me see it in a way I would not see it naturally.
219
Life’s like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.
220
I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.
221
I just try to write what I think would really happen, and with grief and tragedy, there are these naturally occurring moments of levity and humor and absurdity. I think that’s what life is really like. Sadness gets interrupted, and happiness gets interrupted.
222
When I was taken to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, a manuscript of mine ready for publication was confiscated. Certainly, my deep desire to write this manuscript anew helped me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in.
223
I owe very, very much to Mozart; and if one studies, for instance, the way in which I write for string quartet, then one cannot deny that I have learned this directly from Mozart. And I am proud of it!
Arnold Schoenberg
224
My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.
225
I used to hang out with grandfather all the time because he used to pick me up from school sometimes, or drive me to my mother’s, so I’d be with my grandfather a lot. I used to watch him write his sermons.
226
Never think you can’t do something. I definitely never thought I could write a book, and even after I started writing it, I was like, ‘Oh my God, how am I gonna write a book?’ Just set your sights high and reach for the stars. Go live your dreams, and never think you can’t.
227
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
228
I do not write, I build.
Alvar Aalto
229
My biggest extravagances are also investments. I have several houses in California, a house in Nashville, an office complex, and I bought the old home place in Tennessee. They are different places for me to write, but I can turn right around and sell them.
230
If you write a hit song for Britney Spears, it’s worth several million dollars. Just one song! And it might have taken you two hours to do it. It’s like mining for gold. It takes a lot of skill and a lot of technique.
231
The way I write, words can means lots of different things.
Beth Orton
232
I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.
233
What can a pencil do for all of us? Amazing things. It can write transcendent poetry, uplifting music, or life-changing equations; it can sketch the future, give life to untold beauty, and communicate the full-force of our love and aspirations.
234
Some people play the piano, some do Sudoku, some watch television, some people go out to dinner parties. I write books.
235
‘The Immigrant Story,’ which took me about twenty-five years to write, was a very simple story, but I couldn’t think of how to tell it. Then twenty years after I started it, I found this one page and realized it was going to be the story. That’s the only way you get it sometimes.
236
Talent is a matter of quantity. Talent does not write on page, it writes three hundred.
Jules Renard
237
For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.
238
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
239
Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.
240
A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth. In a memoir, I look at myself, my life, and the people I love the most in the mirror of the blank screen. In a memoir, feelings are more important than facts, and to write honestly, I have to confront my demons.
241
Any play is hard to write, and plays are getting harder and harder to get on the stage.
242
I’m not everybody’s cup of tea. But sometimes criticism can be hurtful. Be respectful. I’m a good piano player, I can sing well, I write good songs. If you don’t like it, fair enough. But give me a break.
243
Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.
244
No British TV company could ever make a series like ‘The West Wing’ about British politics. It would beggar credibility. No one could write it with a straight face, or perform it without giggling.
245
I was just on the edge of getting married, and I was frenzied at the prospect of this great step in my life after having been a bachelor for so long. And I really wanted to take my mind off of the agony, and so I decided to sit down and write a book.
Ian Fleming
246
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.
247
The real middle class India that has always been looking for a voice that is its very own. I write about it because I belong to it.
Chetan Bhagat
248
Don’t weep for me; don’t write any sob stories.
Gertrude Ederle
249
Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.
250
I try and write satire that’s well-intentioned. But those intentions have to be hidden. It can’t be completely clear, and that’s what makes it comedy.
251
When I was 21, I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for ‘The Simpsons‘ who’d briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.
252
It’s very hard to teach someone how to write a song if to begin with there’s no creative crop to harvest.
Barry Mann
253
As soon as you sit down to write about something you are pressing your nose deeper into the sewer of facts.
Theo Van Gogh
254
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.
Toni Tennille
255
Here’s something I probably shouldn’t be saying: I never listen to my soundtrack albums because I can’t stand it. It’s just stereo. When I write, I write in surround. My life is in surround.
Hans Zimmer
256
I wanted to be the first girl in my class to get married. From the seventh grade on, I used to write in my yearbook under each senior‘s picture, ‘married’ or ‘engaged.’ I had marriage on the brain.
257
My stories often begin with a situation or character rather than an insight about the human condition. It’s always been difficult for me to write from an abstract idea, no matter how interesting or compelling I feel the idea might be.
258
I do not see how a man can work on the frontiers of physics and write poetry at the same time. They are in opposition.
Paul Dirac
259
How can any one paint who cannot grade colors? How can any one write poetry who has not learnt to hear and see?
260
I wrote my first song at 12 and remember someone asking, ‘What were you going through at 12 that you could write about?’ I get what you’re saying, but 11, 12, 13 were the hardest years of my life. You learn everything. You learn how horrible things feel.
261
I grew up in a working-class Catholic family in south Louisiana. I went to a state university. I taught literature, wrote a novel that was the novel I wanted to write, and got a couple of good reviews but no real traction. I had no idea how to get a job in TV.
262
Be careful that you do not write or paint anything that is not your own, that you don’t know in your own soul.
Emily Carr
263
When I got to Florida, I was a British kid, but I was also an Indian kid: a brown kid with an English accent. Talk about being an outsider. And that’s become the theme of a lot of the stuff I write about.
264
I don’t use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.
Jay Dratler
265
Everybody has to write out of rage sometimes.
Amy Clampitt
266
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.
267
There’s probably a couple someones that are gonna hear the songs and go, ‘I think that might have been about me,’ or, ‘I know it’s about me.’ I do play that pretty close to the vest. I don’t think I’m ever gonna write a song and drop somebody‘s name in it.
268
I have my good days and my bad days, but I don’t have as much energy as I used to back when I was young and foolish and didn’t count the cost – and it takes a lot – to write.
269
I love movies, but I would love to write as many graphic novels as people would read from me.
270
I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.
271
I’ve taken a stand against religion for as long I’ve been able to write and think.
Roy Harper
272
My life has been a dream. If someone had to write a story about it, it would seem a little unreal. It’s the kind of story I would read and say, ‘Nah, that’s not possible.’
273
I think there is only one way to write fiction – alone, in a room, without interruption or any distraction.
274
To write a diary every day is like returning to one’s own vomit.
Enoch Powell
275
A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.
276
I do write a lot of children’s songs, and I’m going to do a children’s television show, which also means I’ll be doing a lot of albums. So I do hope my future will hold a lot of things for children.
277
I write because writing is the gift God has given me to help people in the world.
278
Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.
279
I never try to convey a message, I just want to tell a story. Why that story in particular? I have no idea, but I have learned to surrender to the muse. I become obsessed with a theme or with certain stories; they haunt me for years, and finally, I write them.
280
I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards.
281
I used to work in the cotton fields a lot when I was young. There were a lot of African Americans working out there. A lot of Mexicans – the blacks and the whites and the Mexicans, all out there singing, and it was like an opera in the cotton fields, and I can still hear it in the music that I write and play today.
282
I believe writing is where it all begins; you can not make a film look different, you have to write it differently.
Rakshit Shetty
283
College isn’t in everyone’s hearts. I am living proof, though, that school doesn’t mess up your plans. It gives you more experiences to write about.
284
Ivanka was asking her work contacts at the White House to write to her at her private email – the exact offense the Trumps had lambasted Hillary Clinton for during the general election. Would anyone chant ‘Lock her up!’ about Ivanka’s private server? Doubtful.
285
It just happens I write fast and always have done.
286
I could have been a cult writer if I’d kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I could write a realistic book.
287
We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained.
288
I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions that you can possibly delve into.
289
I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.
290
When I write about Mickey Haller as the Lincoln lawyer, I totally see Matthew McConaughey because he took that character when that character was still fairly new to me – only two or three years old – when I knew McConaughey was going to play him. He’s also the same age, the right age, in comparison to the book.
291
I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.
292
I write all of my material. It’s all me.
293
I was 22 and stopped writing plays, and I didn’t start again until I was 25. I was writing badly. In college, I attempted to write these more conventional plays, but the theater I loved was downtown experimental theater. I didn’t feel like I could do that either. It didn’t occur to me to do my own thing.
Annie Baker
294
I’m always asked if the songs that I write are therapeutic, and my answer is a quick no. In fact, it could be argued that they exacerbate my neurosis.
295
From Caesar‘s legions to the Napoleonic wars. From the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution to the defeat of nazism. We have helped to write European history, and Europe has helped write ours.
296
In the early ’90s, when I really started to find my voice, I was reading a lot of books, and I was moved by the writers, like Chinua Achebe, and I wanted to be able to write rhymes that were as potent as what I was reading.
297
Penmanship means a lot to me. I don’t have cursive penmanship, though. I’ve created my own penmanship. It’s very clear. Everyone can read it. I write things down all day long.
298
Anyone who believes you can’t change history has never tried to write his memoirs.
David Ben-Gurion
299
I adopted a motto: Never say no. Jim Morrison never said no, Kurt Cobain never said no. You couldn’t have great things to write about if all you did was sit in your living room with your roommates talking about the phone bill.
300
I write in the most classical French because this form is necessary for my novels: to translate the murky, floating, unsettling atmosphere I wanted them to have, I had to discipline it into the clearest, most traditional language possible.
301
I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.
302
If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water‘s edge.
303
The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little – or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.
304
The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box.
305
I wake up at 5:30 and head to the gym and reach the sets by 8:30. So there is nothing to write about me. But people have to say something, so they make up some gossip. It’s okay I guess.
306
To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write.
307
Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.
308
The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.
309
When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.
310
I write most of my songs when I’m in a bad mood.
311
I don’t really have a writing process. I don’t write at all but, honestly, I feel like it’s a modern-day writing because everything is technology and if I go in there and freestyle and I keep it, I feel like I wrote that. If I go in there and fix it, it’s almost like something I wrote.
312
In general, what fans talk about and think about become a very important source of inspiration to us, because we want to write something that’s real to people, especially those who listen to BTS music.
Suga
313
Write whatever you like!
314
I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry; I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression or to improve my English.
315
In fiction, when you paint yourself into a corner, you can write a pair of suction cups onto the bottoms of your shoes and walk up the wall and out the skylight and see the sun breaking through the clouds. In nonfiction, you don’t have that luxury.
316
I write poetry, and I put it to a beat – I mean, that’s what they call rap.
317
In the TV business, you’ve got to write fast, and someone will tell you, ‘Can you rewrite this episode before… 6 P.M.?’ So that’s when you rewrite it. You can’t wait for the muse to show up.
318
The idea for ‘Conversations with Friends’ – two college students who befriend a married couple – struck me at first as a concept for a short story. I started to write it under the titleMelissa,’ and eventually, it got too long.
319
If ever I was feeling down I would go and write something. It’s a form of escape.
320
I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
321
When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don’t try to write a parable or make a point.
Lauren DeStefano
322
I don’t know how to write love letters.
323
I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.
324
You don’t write a book to show off.
Tony Orlando
325
What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude.
326
I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.
327
I thought a book on miracles might be a great idea, but just because it’s a great idea doesn’t mean I’m supposed to do it. But my editor persisted, and eventually I thought, ‘He’s right. I should write this book.’
328
I edit as I write and shoot. Any extra line, any pause that I know will get chopped on the editing table is done away with then and there.
329
I’ve been writing a lot of sad songs, and I got to the point where I was like, ‘You can’t write another one or you’re lying.’
330
The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
331
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.
332
I don’t know the rules of grammar… If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.
333
If you feel bored or uncomfortable as you’re writing, ask yourself what’s bothering you and write about that. Sometimes your creative energy is like water in a kinked hose, and before thoughts can flow on the topic at hand, you have to straighten the hose by attending to whatever is preoccupying you.
Natalie Goldberg
334
You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
335
You can write the best column in the world on Monday, and it does you absolutely no good on Tuesday. There is no way to win. You just write until you are tired, they fire you, or you die.
336
She can’t even chew gum and walk in a straight line, let alone write a book.
Liam Gallagher
337
If you were to say to me that I couldn’t paint, I would write. If I couldn’t write, I would be a set designer. As long as I’m creating something, I’m happy.
338
I came from anonymity, and I will continue to write as a private pursuit.
339
We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter – and to write it in the books of law.
340
There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
341
Maybe I should write ‘Tiger Who?’ on my cap.
Vijay Singh
342
I just freestyle. I don’t actually write the words on paper. It’s just whatever comes into my mind. I’ll record three or four lines at a time, get a good take, and do three or four more. It may be whatever comes into my mind. But I care about my craft a lot more than a lot of other people.
343
I’ve always wanted to assist Gautham. I’m happy that I actually got an opportunity to write for him. It’s a dream come true to be associated with him.
344
Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.
Ho Chi Minh
345
A drop of water, if it could write out its own history, would explain the universe to us.
346
I don’t want to write every week, it’s too much trouble, and I shall only write when I want something. If you think I’m sick when I don’t write, you can send for me to come and tell you.
Robert Gould Shaw
347
Women who are inclined to write poetry at all are inspired by being mad at something.
Amy Clampitt
348
Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.
Thomas Berger
349
I need some time to write songs and work on my thing, but I’m just living my life and doing family stuff and letting inspiration come when it comes. But I also don’t feel a desperate need to keep pushing myself into people’s faces to stay cool and relevant.
350
Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Lee Child and George R. R. Martin write wildly different books. Their writing, plotting and styles have little or nothing in common. But they all write books and characters that readers find appealing.
351
I spent the night on a sliver of rock high up on the east face of Long’s Peak, climbing with Tom Frost, and slept at the icy feet of the Dru, listening to the lightning crack above me and the thunder roll down. I only did it to write about it. I would never go up on the Grotto Wall for fun.
352
If I sit down to write a joke about, whatever, the polluted Gulf of Mexico, it comes out mundane to me.
353
I have rituals for cleaning out resentments, disappointments, heartbreak, depression and for work. One of the things I do is go over old stuff if I have been unable to write for a while.
Hubert Selby, Jr.
354
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.
355
I have seen incredible bravery from very young guys, the young generation that people write off.
356
I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know. And writing Langston Hughes replica poems became me wanting to write like Stevie Wonder.
357
Before the Civil War, there were no national cemeteries, no processes for identifying the dead in the battle. There weren’t any dog tags, and there was no next-of-kin notification. You didn’t necessarily even hear what the fate of your loved ones had been. It was up to their comrades to write and inform you.
358
I won’t say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like: What I’m going to be if I grow up.
Lenny Bruce
359
People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.
360
God knows why – no pun intended – but every time I write a song, I feel a need to touch on religion.
361
If you can write DNA, you’re no longer limited to ‘what is’ but to what you could make.
Drew Endy
362
There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.
363
I could never really imagine myself doing one thing, and I’m pretty sure that I’ll end up doing four or five different things. I want to be a Renaissance woman. I want to paint, and I want to write, and I want to act, and I want to just do everything.
364
I write about nerds who go the extra mile and become rock stars.
Ben Mezrich
365
The music helped me sympathize with our young generation and also empathize with them. I’d like to create and write more music that represents them.
366
So, it becomes an exercise in futility if you write something that does not express the film as the director wishes. It’s still their ball game. It’s their show. I think any successful composer learns how to dance around the director’s impulses.
367
I’m like a bad musical cliche because I bring my guitar on the road and try to write songs in hotel rooms.
368
The single best piece of advice I give to aspiring writers is to always write about things that they know. I suggest that they write about people and places and events and conflicts they are familiar with. That way their writing will be real and hopefully readers will respond to it. I try to take my own advice.
D. J. MacHale
369
It’s a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can’t begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.
370
That’s something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.
371
Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
372
Texting is fingered speech. Now we can write the way we talk.
373
My website inspired me to create my book club and provides me with a creative outlet where I can write about things that interest me. It’s a platform where I can present ideas or new ventures and get feedback straight from the people who mean the most to me.
374
I can’t read, I don’t know how to write, my whole life has been one big fight.
Albert King
375
Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.
Nadia Boulanger
376
I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue.
377
You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.
Frank Zappa
378
Love songs are the most complex to write because everyone knows about it.
379
If I inherited a billion dollars and didn’t have to work ever again, what would I do to fill my day? I’d paint, I’d write jokes and stories, and I’d hang out and chat to very interesting people.
380
It’s a whole new world out here. The online world is like a blackboard on which, when you write, the whole world can see – and I’m thrilled about this development. I want to make full use of it.
381
Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.
382
As writers, we are sketching people all the time when we write fiction.
383
I’m not sure I could write a straight urban fantasy any more than I could write a straight contemporary story. I would end up being intimidated by all the small details.
Anne Bishop
384
Write out the story – rapidly, fluently, and not too criticallyfollowing 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.
385
To try to write a grand cosmical drama leads necessarily to myth. To try to let knowledge substitute ignorance in increasingly larger regions of space and time is science.
Hannes Alfven
386
I am not a political writer. I agree with Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell, who are social writers. I can’t write in that fashion. I am not good enough for that. What I am interested in is family dramas and why we are doing bad things to each other and what our motives are.
Hakan Nesser
387
I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.
388
I don’t have to go into outer space to write about an astronaut.
389
I write the music, produce it and the band plays within the parameters that I set.
390
If you make your living writing, and you can’t write anything, it’s over. It’s very frightening.
391
We write to taste life twice: in the moment and in retrospection.
392
I write all my own raps myself, 100 percent. And it feels good to be able to say that.
393
I like to write film music that stands on its own.
394
All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends, or family.
395
Morocco is such a beautiful place. It’s incredibly beautiful. And also it is captivating place because for a writer, you feel that you make impact. I mean, when I write something in the press, the day after in the fish market, people will be discussing it.
396
The starting point of discovering who you are, your gifts, your talents, your dreams, is being comfortable with yourself. Spend time alone. Write in a journal. Take long walks in the woods.
397
I’m just going to write because I cannot help it.
398
Someone who wants to write should make an effort to write a little something every day. Writing in this sense is the same as athletes who practice a sport every day to keep their skills honed.
Anita Desai
399
Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.
400
I think the secret is really observation. Well, if you observe what’s going on and try to figure out how people are thinking, I think you can always write something that people will understand.
Sam Cooke
401
I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.
402
Generally, I like Indian music because the melodies are usually not too complex, which is how I like music, and that’s the way I write music.
403
As soon as I began, it seemed impossible to write fast enough – I wrote faster than I would write a letter – two thousand to three thousand words in a morning, and I cannot help it.
Helen Hunt Jackson
404
I wanted to write a book that talked about the emotions of children, which is the rainbow. We all have moods. We talk about being blue when we’re sad, and being yellow when we’re cowards, and when we’re mad, we’re red.
405
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
Alan Perlis
406
I think of talent as being God-given. I know that contradicts what a lot of people believe, but that’s how I see it. I think the Beatles were meant to be, you know? So when I listen to Paul McCartney, I think, ‘Here’s the person that God gave the gift of allowing him to write ‘Let It Be.’
407
The way you pronounce words the Puerto Rico way, it’s not really global for music. Colombians speak some of the best Spanish in the world. So having a Colombian next to me every time I write makes my music more international.
408
The pen is an instrument of discovery rather than just a recording implement. If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you’re simply using a pen to record what you have thought out.
409
Oh my God, I never really tweet, but there’s a moment every day I write one and then delete it.
410
We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.
411
Write your own stories.
412
Whatever you do, make sure you want to write more than you want to be a writer. Make sure you want to act more than you want to be an actor. That is what will sustain you.
413
I believe, 50 years from now, when you write history, one technology that would have changed human civilization is going to be the mobile Internet.
414
While writing, I’m always so happy in the middle of a book or finishing a book and really hate starting them, so I often think, ‘I wish I had a really big book to write to which I could devote seven years of my life.’
415
Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
416
They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‘first chapters‘. I have indeed written many.
417
Substitute ‘damn‘ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
418
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.
419
I thought, If people are going to write about what I’m wearing, then I would wear young British designers who need the publicity.
420
The only way to get love is to be lovable. It’s very irritating if you have a lot of money. You’d like to think you could write a check: ‘I’ll buy a million dollars’ worth of love.’ But it doesn’t work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get.
421
I write in a diary every night to collect my thoughts. It’s very therapeutic to songwrite, because it’s the same thing.
422
When I write songs, when I sing songs, I don’t have anybody in mind. I’m just trying to express what I think people are feeling.
423
You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.
424
The thing I always default to is that I’ll always be here to write songs.
425
Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.
426
We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.
C. Day Lewis
427
My father, Leo Henry Brown, really was talented – he could write. He had a gift, and he had a great, sly humor.
428
I wrote an article on a new Porsche for ‘Automobile Magazine.’ I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I’m more proud of that than anything.
429
I call ‘Community‘ the best day job in the world, because between takes, I get to write music. I get to write sketches. I get to write movies. It’s the best job ever.
430
When I write a goal down – and I truly write them down – it becomes a part of me. That’s a contract that I sign with myself to say, ‘I don’t care what happens – I’m going to stay on this path. I’m going to try and see this through; I’m going to give it my best shot, my best effort.’
431
Is the modern social pattern of unending change and movement the cause of two modern diseases, insecurity and dissatisfaction? How lucky Thomas Hood was to be able to write, ‘I remember, I remember the house where I was born.’ I don’t even know what mine looked like!
432
I’m not a great deductive thinker, but I will admit to having competence in a very wide range of things – not being afraid to try to write about baseball, choral music and dinosaurs in the same week and see connections among them.
433
I try to write about real women, real peoplein other words flawed characters.
434
Most of the people who write pop music were outsiders at some time in their life.
435
It really surprises me that people in this day and age still write such busy music and fill up every space with layer upon layer of sound… it’s like musical landfill.
James Blake
436
I want our young Latinos and Latinas to write their hearts out and express their hearts out and let us all listen to each other.
437
I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn’t exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips.
Michelle Branch
438
I think anybody alert to the inspiration to write has to be kind of sensitized to the unexpected.
439
There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate – not to the artist, but to the public, blinding them to all but harming the artist not at all.
440
If you can’t sit in a cafe quietly and be ignored, how can you observe human nature and write a story?
441
Whenever I write about mental health and integrative therapies, I am accused of being prejudiced against pharmaceuticals. So let me be clear – integrative medicine is the judicious application of both conventional and evidence-based natural therapies.
442
It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down.
443
People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children’s book. I say, ‘If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children’s book’, but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you’re directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable.
444
Life doesn’t just happen. You happen to life. You decide how you want to write your story.
445
We need to not write off vaping as a safe alternative to smoking. It’s not safe.
446
If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.
447
I had two little daughters – I think they were 7 and 4 at the time – and I said, ‘I’ll write you a story. What do you want it to be about?’ One of them said ‘a princess‘ and the other one said ‘a bride.’ I said, ‘That’ll be the title.’
William Goldman
448
Compared with other Indian film composers, I only write about six movies a year. Others write up to 60.
449
It came about as follows: over the years when I was involved in dianetics, I wrote the beginnings of many stories. I would get an idea, and then write the beginning, and then never touch it again.
A. E. van Vogt
450
I find the experience of keeping a journal much more creative on paper than on a computer. When I write, I’m physically immersed in the world and slow down, whereas on screen, I use my senses in a less engaged way – and I skim more.
Keri Smith
451
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.
452
To write regular verses destroys an infinite number of fine possibilities, but at the same time it suggests a multitude of distant and totally unexpected thoughts.
453
Deer Hunter‘ is a movie; it is not an attempt to write history.
454
If you write your own tools, you can sort of see new things, design new things.
Saul Griffith
455
The truth is, it’s easier for me to write than talk… to express the state I’m in at any time.
456
I can read and write in Hindi.
457
I’m very open and never write what I’m going to say. Speeches bore everybody else. I have to freestyle. Every time, from one program to another, everything changes and I improvise.
458
To overcome poverty and the flaws of the economic crisis in our society, we need to envision our social life. We have to free our mind, imagine what has never happened before and write social fiction. We need to imagine things to make them happen. If you don’t imagine, it will never happen.
459
Sometimes when I write lyrics there are images in them, usually on a quite simplistic level, like colors. But most often music comes first and then later I sit down with visual people and we chat about what we want to do. I don’t look at myself as a visual artist. I make music.
460
You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.
461
There was a recording studio in my school, and I knew this kid who had a key, so I’d write lyrics in school while I was in class, and then, in a 10-minute break, I recorded the song ‘Hurt’ in one go at the school studio.
462
I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It’s a parallel thing in me.
463
I don’t have writer’s block, really. I do have times when I can’t get the lead, and that is the only part of the story which I have serious trouble with. I don’t write a word of the article until I have the lead. It just sets the whole tone – the whole point of view.
464
Anytime I have to write down what I do, I write yoga instructor. That’s what I do. My thing is yoga.
465
I love pop music. It’s not easy to write a good pop song.
466
I write from my stomach.
467
I can write anywhere. I write in airports. I write on airplanes. I’ve written in the back seats of taxis. I write in hotel rooms. I love hotel rooms. I just write wherever I am whenever I need to write.
468
I put a lot of myself into my characters when I write.
Alison Tyler
469
I am traveling less in order to be able to write more. I select my travel destinations according to their degree of usefulness to my work.
470
I always write the script by myself.
471
In terms of my work, I’ve never been reticent in terms of defining my sexuality. I write about my life.
472
I stay way from that area, and there’s only so many songs you can write about love, sex and death.
473
I don’t think you ever stop giving. I really don’t. I think it’s an on-going process. And it’s not just about being able to write a check. It’s being able to touch somebody’s life.
474
I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn’t write anything without hope in it.
Oscar Hammerstein II
475
Some people act as though art that is for a mass audience is not good art, and I think this has been a very negative thing. I know that I have wanted very much to write books that are accessible to the widest audience possible.
476
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
477
You can write a great country record and still be angry. Who’s angrier than Toby Keith? He’s angrier than the average 10 rappers.
478
I’m not a big fan of psychoanalysis: I think if you have mental problems what you need are good pills. But I do think that if you have thinks that bother you, things that are unresolved, the more that you talk about them, write about them, the less serious they become.
479
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.
480
You almost have to create situations in order to write about them, so I live in a constant state of self-imposed poverty. I don’t want to live any other way.
481
Even if I don’t release it myself, somebody else might hear it and want to record it. When you write a song, it gives it that potential.
482
Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
483
If you do enough planning before you start to write, there’s no way you can have writer’s block. I do a complete chapter by chapter outline.
484
Always speak the truth, think before you speak, and write it down afterwards.
485
If you know somebody is going to be awfully annoyed by something you write, that’s obviously very satisfying, and if they howl with rage or cry, that’s honey.
486
The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals.
487
Most ideas remain inside you for a while. You tell somebody when there is a spark or a thought, and leave it at that. You come back later, write down a few lines. I makes note in my mind on whether it can be made into a film or not.
488
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.
489
You cannot write for children They’re much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.
490
Normally, I just sit in my quiet little room and do the small things that bring me pleasures. I read my books, I answer email, I write a little bit.
491
To become an American citizen, we require people to read, write and speak in English. That is to help them to assimilate in our melting pot, truly to become Americans. We mock that when the cherished right to vote does not involve English any more.
492
I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.
493
Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.
494
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
495
I look at you and I write down what I hear.
Virgil Thomson
496
Golf is a game in which you yell ‘fore,’ shoot six, and write down five.
Paul Harvey
497
Today is the first of August. It is hot, steamy and wet. It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: ‘After a heavy rainfall, poems titled ‘Rain’ pour in from across the nation.’
498
Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.
499
If I write when I’m low, it will be a dark song, but I don’t care. I want to be honest with myself at all times.
Ayumi Hamasaki
500
The right way to enjoy ‘Heavy Rain’ is really to make one thing because it’s going to be your story. It’s going to be unique to you. It’s really the story you decided to write.
501
In a larger sense, we all write our own destiny.
502
For years I’ve wanted to write a book about mummies, and had been following the science of mummy CT scans when the premise for ‘The Keepsake’ occurred to me: what if an ‘ancient‘ mummy turns out to have a bullet in its leg? How does a modern murder victim get turned into a mummy?
503
For a male artist, people instantly assume they write their own music, but for women, they assume it’s all manufactured.
504
Your emotional life is not written in cement during childhood. You write each chapter as you go along.
Harry Stack Sullivan
505
There is that lovely feeling of one reader telling another, ‘You must read this.’ I’ve always wanted to write a book like that, with the sense that you are contributing to the discourse in middle America, a discourse that begins at a book club in a living room, but then spreads. That is meaningful to me.
506
You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.
507
I didn’t do anything but write for six months after I got my publishing deal. That was just trying to get better and figure out my sound and the way I like to do it.
508
If I haven‘t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.
509
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
510
Let no man write my epitaph… When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then shall my character be vindicated, then may my epitaph be written.
Robert Emmet
511
I grew up in an environment of jokes and sarcasm and puns. I talk that way, so I write that way.
Allan Sloan
512
The man who has done his level best… is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure.
B. C. Forbes
513
You could have written the biggest hit song, and all eyes are looking to you to write another one. It’s not a thankless job; it’s just an endless job.
514
When people write comedy from neutrality, it just gets kind of silly.
Mort Sahl
515
I do what I do, and write what I write, without calculating what is worth what and so on. Fortunately, I am not a banker or an accountant. I feel that there is a time when a political statement needs to be made and I make it.
516
I have a lot of boyfriends, I want you to write that. Every country I visit, I have a different boyfriend. And I kiss them all.
517
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.
518
People would tell me, especially after my marriage to Prince, ‘You need to write a book because you’ve had a crazy life.’
519
Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.
520
Be careful that what you write does not offend anybody or cause problems within the company. The safest approach is to remove all useful information.
521
Pain’s always been the root of my music. I just write what I feel.
NF
522
All we need is a meteorologist who has once been soaked to the skin without ill effect. No one can write knowingly of the weather who walks bent over on wet days.
523
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.
524
It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.
525
I’m probably only going to make 10 movies, so I’m already planning on what I’m going to do after that. That’s why I’m counting them. I have two more left. I want to stop at a certain point. What I want to do, basically, is I want to write novels, and I want to write theatre, and I want to direct theatre.
526
Anytime you write something, you go through so many phases. You go through the ‘I’m a Fraud‘ phase. You go through the ‘I’ll Never Finish’ phase. And every once in a while you think, ‘What if I actually have created what I set out to create, and it’s received as such?’
527
The desire to write grows with writing.
528
I’m lucky in the sense that I can write wherever I am – on the bus, in the hotel room, backstage, sitting at home.
529
Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.
530
The way I work uses a very on-the-spot flow, and I write the lyrics and the music when I feel them coming.
531
Writing a song is much like being an author. Yes, we all have tools to write (everyone has a brain I hope!), but that doesn’t all of a sudden make us best selling authors.
Ken Hill
532
Graphic novels are not traditional literature, but that does not mean they are second-rate. Images are a way of writing. When you have the talent to be able to write and to draw, it seems a shame to choose one. I think it’s better to do both.
533
When Kubrick called me about ‘The Shining,’ it was very strange. He first asked me to write music for his film, but I instead gave him suggestions about some of my pieces. I told him about ‘The Awakening of Jacob,’ which he did use in ‘The Shining.’
534
Well, I must tell you I write the scripts very close to the bone. So I’m writing episode seven now and couldn’t tell you what happens in episode eight.
535
The pen is mightier than the sword, and considerably easier to write with.
Marty Feldman
536
I am sure of this: that no one can write a book which children will like unless he write it for himself first.
537
I think I’m always subconsciously trying to write the ideal school play. Lots of parts for everybody, great parts for women – don’t forget, more girls try out than boys in the school play; everyone gets to be in the school play.
538
A very wise author once said that a writer writes for himself, and then publishes for money. I write for myself and publish just for the reader.
539
I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14… I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write.
540
Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.
541
My art and my creativities were totally something that was of my own heart and mind. I could never let anybody dictate to me what I should write and how I would write it.
542
Coding is like writing, and we live in a time of the new industrial revolution. What’s happened is that maybe everybody knows how to use computers, like they know how to read, but they don’t know how to write.
543
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.
544
I’ve always spent more time with a smile on my face than not, but the thing is, I don’t write about it.
545
I myself never make any notes. Usually, if I write something down, I can’t read it afterwards.
Roman Abramovich
546
I write while listening to music, mostly because the world beyond my headphones is too chaotic.
Dean Bakopoulos
547
If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.
548
If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light, If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.
549
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.
550
Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.
Otto von Bismarck
551
I always say I write my own novels and the characters don’t take control of me, but in fact, I look at the characters in the early stages and I think, ‘What is he or she like,’ and they slowly come together and they become the person they are.
552
To help people in the third world get educated and learn how to read and write is so important. I mean it is such an important human right.
553
We played some gigs in Switzerland a couple of weeks ago and it was the first time I really felt the group was really a band in the sense of something I could write for.
Fred Frith
554
No matter what you write, you actually can’t help retelling a fairy tale somewhere along the way.
Catherynne M. Valente
555
I’d like to write the way Matisse paints.
556
If you’re going to write about rap music and hip-hop, and you don’t love it, then we don’t need your opinion, and we revoke your opinion.
557
I sit in places like Costa Coffee in Banstead and write rubbish. I need a deadline. I think about the 44 tour dates and keep imagining standing in front of all these people. Then every day I write 15 jokes minimum.
558
The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.
559
I write about love, but it’s me wanting to be in love. I’ve never been in love. I love my mom, my dad. I want to be in love. I think I have to allow myself to get there. I’m just so in love with music. It’s weird. I’m at a crossroads because I want to be in love.
560
Writing itself is a dream. There are days of self doubt and deadlines and wondering how you’re going to pay the bills until you write that bestseller. But it’s still the best job I’ve ever had. I’ve also been able to help a lot of people and even inspire a few and that feels great.
Graham Brown
561
Sometimes I feel as if I am read before I write. When I write a poem about my mother, Palestinians think my mother is a symbol for Palestine. But I write as a poet, and my mother is my mother. She’s not a symbol.
Mahmoud Darwish
562
You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.
563
Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so.
564
I would run into the corner store, the bodega, and just grab a paper bag or buy juice – anything just to get a paper bag. And I’d write the words on the paper bag and stuff these ideas in my pocket until I got back. Then I would transfer them into the notebook.
565
A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.
566
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.
567
Well, all the plays that I was trying to write were plays that would grab an audience by the throat and not release them, rather than presenting an emotion which you could observe and walk away from.
568
Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.
569
I won a Marshall scholarship to read philosophy at Oxford, and what I most wanted to do was strengthen public intellectual culture – I’d write books and essays to help us figure out who we wanted to be.
570
I always say I write because I have questions, not because I have answers. It’s true that you begin the conversation – that’s the role of the artist. But it’s not my job to tell us what to do next. I wish I had those tools.
571
I like to think of my work and the way people approach it in the same way people approach a Lichtenstein painting. You can write a one-hundred-page dissertation about why he used comics. Or it could be like, ‘This is cute!’
572
I was born in Bangalore but grew up in Kolkata and I read, write and speak Bengali.
573
I just write when the bell rings. I don’t have time to wait for inspiration.
574
I write everything with fountain pens. I don’t know why. I’ve done it since I was bar mitzvahed. I was given a fountain pen, a Parker fountain pen, and I loved it, and I’ve never liked writing anything with pencils or ball-points.
575
On a good day I write, all day.
576
I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.
577
I think if everyone would write down the funny stories from their own childhoods, the world would be a better place.
578
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.
579
As I approached my 95th birthday, I was burdened to write a book that addressed the epidemic of ‘easy believism.’ There is a mindset today that if people believe in God and do good works, they are going to Heaven.
580
I think about it as not so much ‘I need to get it out of me,’ it’s not that my thoughts are poison, I just want to write good music.
581
I started going on YouTube and studying everybody who was super popular, from Taylor Swift to Beyonce to Michael Jackson to Chris Brown, just everybody… That’s what helped me find my voice and helped me find how I write songs, just doing covers.
582
One can’t write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don’t like poetry.
Nathalie Sarraute
583
I don’t only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and… ants. I can understand ants.
584
Never give up. And most importantly, be true to yourself. Write from your heart, in your own voice, and about what you believe in.
585
A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
586
I don’t think that women necessarily always write like women. I was a writer on the ‘Comedy Central Roasts’ for a while, and I always wrote the jokes that people assumed the men would write.
587
I don’t write on topics that require a lot of urgency. But in ‘Stiff,’ I wanted to change people’s hearts about organ donation. Whenever I get a chance, I try to talk about that.
588
I cannot write poetically, for I am no poet. I cannot make fine artistic phrases that cast light and shadow, for I am no painter. I can neither by signs nor by pantomime express my thoughts and feelings, for I am no dancer; but I can by tones, for I am a musician.
589
I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.
Taiye Selasi
590
I’ll have to get people to write songs for me right now until my own writing comes around.
Andy Gibb
591
The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.
592
I can write absolutely anywhere. All I need is a laptop.
593
When I get moved to write a story, I don’t question the story. I dive right in, and I try to ignore the voices that are chattering away at me: ‘You can’t do that’, ‘You shouldn’t do that’. I just sort of leap and take a chance and go for it.
594
Everything I write is about big feelings. What I care about is trying to be brave enough to feel how you feel and to be emotionally true.
595
I would love to write more children’s books. There is such a high standard out there for children’s books; there are really amazing writers. It is a fantastic creative outlet and such an amazing teaching tool. The thing I love about kids, too, is it is so imaginative and poetic.
596
A lot of times, somebody will say something and it will give you a good title. So you carry a pencil with you and jot that down. You don’t just write a song right quick, though. You fool around and work with it. You have to keep going over and over it and see if you can’t write a song that means something.
Gene Autry
597
Write a page a day. It will add up.
Herman Wouk
598
One of the disadvantages of poetry over popular music is that if you write a pop song, it naturally gets into people’s heads as they listen in the car. You don’t have to memorize a Paul Simon song; it’s just in your head, and you can sing along. With a poem, you have to will yourself to memorize it.
599
Why do I write? I have been called a writer of catastrophes, but that isn’t true. I am always looking for words of love. Hate will not save us. Only love.
600
Well, now that he’s finished one building, he’ll go write four books about it.
601
What we call the ‘world’ and the ‘universe’ is only one frequency range in an infinite number sharing the same space. The interdimensional entities I write about are able to move between these frequencies or dimensions and manipulate our lives.
602
It really fascinates me what white people are allowed to write about.
603
If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.
Juan Ramon Jimenez
604
I think, after ‘Let Her Go,’ I wanted to show people that I don’t just write really sad love songs about my ex-girlfriend: that there’s another side to Passenger as well that’s a bit more up-tempo and more inclined to social commentary.
605
I have no ambitions at all! I have none… seriously. I want to be a good father. I want to be a good husband. I want to be a good son, a good brother, a good family member. I don’t have any ambition to direct a film or write a play. I like acting.
606
It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.
607
It makes me feel wonderful that people still care for me… that I have so many fans among young people, who write to me and tell me I have been an inspiration.
Bettie Page
608
I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.
Gwendolyn Brooks
609
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
610
I start with a character and a situation, but I don’t know what’s going to happen until I write it. Sometimes things happen that surprise me.
611
And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.
612
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.
613
I want the last cheque I write to bounce.
614
I don’t write; I just go in the booth.
615
The moment I write out a cheque, it’s an asset I have written off.
616
I’ve always had a fantasy to write a cookbook, because everyone wants to know what a model eats.
617
Don’t let your mouth write a check that your tail can’t cash.
Bo Diddley
618
‘E.T.’ began with me trying to write a story about my parents’ divorce.
619
When the Bible was first published, bathhouses were mandatory, no one could read, and only the people in the Church could write.
620
When I write, I can shake off all my cares.
621
People write negatives things, cause they feel that’s what sells. Good news to them, doesn’t sell.
622
I keep trying to write happy endings, but my books always end on more of a bittersweet note of ambiguity.
623
My goal was, and still is, to write first, direct my own stuff whenever possible and control my own creative destiny.
Jeff Probst
624
I don’t write books inadvertently.
625
A friend, Sean Cunningham, who went on to do ‘Friday the 13th,’ was given a small budget to produce a scary movie, and he told me to write something. I’d never seen a horror film in my life; I’d fallen in love with Fellini.
626
The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.
627
When you write a story, it just flows and you don’t control it. It’s subconscious.
628
Writing is a solitary experience. I’m extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It’s so intimate, I can’t even share it with my wife.
629
The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.
William Goldman
630
It’s been a very strange trajectory because I struggled for so many years. I mean, I was doing these videos, I was doing these live shows, I had a lot of fans in New York, the press would write about me, but I couldn’t get a paying job, and so my father and I were really like a team.
631
I want to have new challenges and write new crazy books because I think it makes me a better writer to be insecure and try new things.
632
If you’re nice to me I’ll never write anything bad about you.
633
Have you ever heard the expression: Walk a mile in my shoes, and then judge me? And write your own books.
Ann Rule
634
Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write ‘War and Peace’ in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.
635
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.
John Cheever
636
I’ve always worked on the principle that if it interests me enough to write about it, then it must interest a lot of other people.
Morris West
637
What a book a devil‘s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!
638
I refuse to confide and don’t like it when people write about art.
Balthus
639
I’ve learned any fool can write a bad ad, but it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.
Daniel J. Boorstin
640
I never write a book unless I can’t help it. Something has to bother me, like a mosquito, until I have to do something to relieve the itch.
641
I always write about the things that haunt me, the questions I have.
642
I definitely dislike pomposity and artifice. I hope that I’m not that. Once I write a song, it belongs to the world, and the way people perceive it, it’s cool.
643
And I’ve always worked on the principle that if it interests me enough to write about it, then it must interest a lot of other people.
Morris West
644
As long as I don’t write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.
Pierre Beaumarchais
645
Starting a new job can be nerve-racking , but it’s also exciting. You’re embarking on a new future, positioning yourself to write a fresh story on a clean slate.
646
I was born into Sudan‘s civil war, and before I could read or write, I was using an AK47 in the conflict between the Muslim north and Animist/Christian south over the land and natural resources.
Ger Duany
647
The things I write about are the things that I am passionate about, interested in, and fighting for in my life.
648
And I’m a slow writer: five, six hundred words is a good day. That’s the reason it took me 20 years to write those million and a half words of the Civil War.
Shelby Foote
649
My early novels were written in quite a dark place. I stand by them, but I would never write them again. I think it is subversive to embrace emotional optimism, because it goes against the grain.
650
I think I write in a fairly self-confident manner.
651
I wanted to write a novel where the meaning is in the story and characters and the subliminal, in the shades and nuances. It’s exciting to develop that as a writer.
652
A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.
653
I loved writing lyrics for rap when I was in junior high. I loved studying, but somehow I wanted to be a rapper who can write and rap.
654
Political consequences have never really come into my thinking. I didn’t think about it when we made ‘Maurice’ or when I said first I would co-direct and then write the screenplay of ‘Call Me’. I was just making something I thought I would enjoy creating.
655
One day, I can come up with 50 content ideas, and I’m like, ‘Boom, I want to do this idea, this idea, this idea.’ I have a YouTube notebook, and I write them all down. Then other days, I’m like, ‘I have no clue what I want to do today.’ I rarely have days like that.
656
Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.
657
I’m more comfortable writing traditional protagonists. But ‘Steve Jobs‘ and ‘The Social Network‘ have antiheroes. I like to write antiheroes as if they’re making their case to God about why they should be allowed into heaven. I have to find something in that character that is like me and write to that.
658
Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.
659
You have to write what you know.
660
I don’t write polite letters. I don’t like to plea-bargain. I like to fight.
Roy Cohn
661
If you continually write and read yourself as a fiction, you can change what’s crushing you.
662
Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.
663
There weren’t any schools in my village, so I learnt to read and write from my mother. I played in the fields, sowing seeds, working with animals, jumping in the river, climbing trees.
664
Always write your ideas down however silly or trivial they might seem. Keep a notebook with you at all times.
665
I could not write about ‘ordinary people‘ because I am not in the least interested in them.
666
So what do you desire to do? What do you really want to do as a person? You need to stop and document that; write it down; make a plan; and then God says, ‘I’ll direct your steps.’
667
Mbeki began to write a study of the workings of apartheid policy in the reserves – the areas set aside in law for African occupation – as early as 1959 and 1960.
Ruth First
668
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.’
669
When people come to write about my period of office, I would be very happy if they say that I made a contribution to finding the happy medium again for the Germans.
670
I think segregation is bad, I think it’s wrong, it’s immoral. I’d fight against it with every breath in my body, but you don’t need to sit next to a white person to learn how to read and write. The NAACP needs to say that.
671
Sometimes I try to concentrate on the story I would like to write, and I realize that what interests me is something else entirely, or, rather, not anything precise but everything that does not fit in what I ought to write.
672
I don’t write with a machine. I write with a pen and a paper, which is what is most comfortable for me.
673
I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool – and I’m not any of those – to say that I don’t write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.
674
Tolkien was quite a religious man, and so is George R.R. Martin. They kind of have this epic quality about them when they write the material.
675
I used to write jokes with friends. We’d pick a topic and then think out loud, brainstorm.
676
677
In high school, my English teacher Celeste McMenamin introduced me to the great novels and Shakespeare and taught me how to write. Essays, poetry, critical analysis. Writing is a skill that was painful then but a love of mine now.
678
I think the most satisfying part about filmmaking is seeing a production in full bloom. When I write, I write in isolation.
679
The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It’s the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song. What do I write about? I never know.
680
In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.
681
In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.
682
I hate government. I’m apolitical. Write that down. I’m not a Republican.
683
If I’ve ever regretted anything, it was putting all my eggs in one basket, holing up and kneeling at the altar of literature, instead of going out and at least reviewing, running around and trying to write for magazines. That would’ve been the intelligent thing to do, but I didn’t, and that was because of fanaticism.
684
You can write anything that you would be able to write on a server and put it onto the blockchain. Instead of Javascript making calls to the server, you would be making calls to the blockchain.
685
If you had asked me, in the days of me dreaming about what would happen in the future, who I would want to write my first original musical, it would hands-down have been Pasek and Paul.
Ben Platt