Best 30386 quotes in «writing quotes» category

On these feature films there are people on the staff who can draw 100 times better then I can, and animate better then I can, and light better then I can, write comedy better then I can. I basically am in the middle of kind of a creative typhoon and I'm just kind of talking the film up on to the screen. Minute to minute, meeting by meeting, day by day.

[On writing to Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple:] I told her I would play a Venetian blind, dirt on the floor, anything.

On the whole, anything that gets you writing and keeps you writing is a good thing. Anything that stops you writing is a bad thing.

On the whole, dialogue is the most difficult thing, without any doubt. It's very difficult, unfortunately. You have to detach yourself from the notion of a lifelike quality. You see, actually lifelike, tape-recorded dialogue like this has very little to do with good novel dialogue. It's a matter of getting that awful tyranny of mimesis out of your mind, which is difficult.

On Twitter, when someone would die, I would write a joke. Or if there's a tragedy, I would write a joke and tweet it. That was my thing, and then at a certain point, people started demanding it.

On the subject of the history of the American Revolution, you ask who shall write it? Who can write it? And who will ever be able to write it? Nobody, except merely its external facts... all its councils, designs and discussions having been conducted by Congress [behind] closed doors - and no members, as far as I know, having even made notes of them. These, which are the life and soul of history, must forever be unknown.

[On writing biography:] If you wish to see a person you must not start by seeing through him.

[On writing:] The most egotistic of occupations, and the most gratifying while it lasts.

On "Tonight" I think I was torn dreadfully between writing what I wanted to write, but keeping it in a style that would follow up what I had just done. That's where I feel I was untrue to myself as an artist . . . that album and, to a lesser extent, "Never Let Me Down.

On tour, it's hard to do much writing, but if I'm on a deadline, I find a way.

[On writing biography:] ... every human life is at once so complex and so simple, so perplexing and so clear, so superficial and so profound, that any attempt to present it as a unified, consistent whole, to enclose it within a rigid frame, inevitably tempts one to cheat or to falsify.

Opening for Louis C.K. during his "Hilarious" tour was a great experience for me. He is the generation just ahead of me, because he started so young. So it's like he's sort of a senior and I'm a junior, in terms of the business. He's done so much - from writing on Conan and Chris Rock to writing and directing movies, having his own HBO show, "Lucky Louie," and now having "Louie" on FX.

Openness by the leader paves the way for ownership by the people. Without ownership, changes will be short term. Changing people's habits and ways of thinking is like writing instructions in the snow during a snowstorm. Every twenty minutes the instructions must be rewritten, unless ownership is given along with instructions.

Open this notebook every day and write down half a page at the very least. If you have nothing to write down, then at least, following Gogol’s advice, write down that today there’s nothing to write. Always write with attention and look on writing as a holiday.

Opinionated writing is always the most difficult... simply because it involves retaining in the cold morning-after crystal of the printed word the burning flow of molten feeling.

[Opetaia Foa'i] brought in the melody and the lyrics, but the lyrics were in Tokelauan, and so, we talked about what it could mean and whether this could be the ancestor song. So, I started writing English lyrics to sort of the same melody.

Opportunities may come along for you to convert something -something that exists into something that didn't yet. That might be the beginning of it. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain. It's not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It's not that easy. You want to write songs that are bigger than life. You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen. You have to know and understand something and then go past the vernacular.

"Oppression" or "systems of oppression" operate as a shorthand terms in much writing and speaking so that we do not have to list all these systems of meaning and control each time (i.e. racism, ableism, xenophobia, etc.). I needed a term like that, but "oppression" implies a kind of top-down understanding of power that is at odds with the Foucaultian model I rely on in my work.

Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.

Ordinary people like you and me can achieve very little on their own. We need to build support. Even if you are a thought leader and have some good ideas on how to make the world better, and even if you write five or ten books - that won't have much effect unless you have people who are willing to support your ideas.

Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.

Orwell says somewhere that no one ever writes the real story of their life. The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.

'Oscar Wao' for example cohered in a period of terrible distress. All the novels that I wanted to write were not happening.

Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing.

Orwell is almost our litmus test. Some of his satirical writing looks like reality these days.

Originally I was not writing songs for myself

Orwell is almost our litmus test. Some of his satirical writing looks like reality these days. When you have someone like Cheney who talks about "endless war" or war that might last fifty years, he could be Big Brother. You have Bush incessantly going on about the evil ones.

Oswald Chambers writes, ‘Never make a principle out of your experience; let God be as original with other people as He is with you.’  To that I would add, ‘Be careful not to turn others’ lives into the mold for your own.’  Allow God to be as creative with you as He is with each of us.

O thou who art able to write a book which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name conqueror or city-burner.

Other writers definitely influence my writing. What encourages me and inspires me is when I read a good book. It makes me want to be a better writer.

Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals. Preferably big ones.

Other people get into occupations by accident or design; but writers are born. I could work at selling motels, or slopping hogs, for fifty years, but if someone asked my occupation, I'd say writer, even if I'd never sold a word. Writers write. Other people talk.

Other people have suggested that I write about teens because I'm perpetually stuck in that stage of my own development. That could very well be true. I would throw out that teens and tweens are just absolutely fabulous and the most interesting people on the planet. And it is a time of high drama, and everything matters.

Other people’s words are so important. And then without warning they stop being important, along with all those words of yours that their words prompted you to write. Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before. Other people’s words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to wherever you’re going.

O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim.

Other people are talking about writing books about my life, or about some of the things I've done. I find it strange, but I also feel it's my life and my story, and I guess I better be the one to get it on paper the way it actually happened.

Other people write about the bling and the booty. I write about the pus and the gnats. To me, that's beautiful.

Others are writing my biography, and let it rest as they elect to make it. I have lived my life, well and ill, always less well than I wanted it to be but it is, as it is, and as it has been; so small a thing, to have had so much about it!

Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretence to it but the free-thinker alone is truly free.

Our audience holds us to an incredibly high standard of continuity and emotional authenticity. We don't toy with that, but oftentimes we write stories, in order to spark debate. We're very determined to always give the answer. We don't want to leave a lot of things open to debate, at the end of the day.

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories and criticism.

Our analytical faculties allow us to look critically at our writing and interpret it. Sometimes we make bold, impulsive edits to our poems, but most forms of precision and economy in poetry, it seems to me, are signatures of the analytical mind.

Our albums just tend to be collections of songs really, because we all write in the group, all four of us.

Our bad luck is that our writing is linear, while we think circularly.

Our capacity to move forward as developing beings rests on a healthy relationship with the past. Psychotherapy, that widespread method for promoting mental health, relies heavily on memory and on the ability to retrieve and organize images and events from the personal pastIf we learn not only to tell our stories but to listen to what our stories tell us—to write the first draft and then return for the second draft—we are doing the work of memory.

Our country has the oldest tradition of storytelling, and this was much before writing stories even became a norm.

Our desires teach us who we are and who we want to become. Our desires shape our stories.

Our day-to-day lives are pretty chaotic. So in terms of the writing part, you have to get pretty disciplined about finding quiet moments and making sure you're making time for the art side, on top of all the time-consuming business side.

Our everyday language has become encumbered, Germanic, artificial, bureaucratic, inorganic. It may not be exaggerated to say that by now American writers face but two alternatives: write English, or write gobbledygook.

Our eyes are not viewers, they're also projectors that are running a second story over the picture that we see in front of us all the time. Fear is writing that script, and the working title is 'I'll never be enough'