We’ve collected the best Write Quotes from the greatest minds of the world: A. S. Byatt, Arthur Miller, George Bernard Shaw, Graham Greene, Walter Benjamin. Use them as an inspiration.
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Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.
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I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.
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If you wouldn’t write it and sign it, don’t say it.
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If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.
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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.
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I’m just going to write because I cannot help it.
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You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.
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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.
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I don’t feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it’s so old-fashioned. I could write a whole novel on scrap paper, scribbles and things. I keep looking at it and something develops. For me, using a word processor would mean staring at a screen for too many hours.
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If you wish to be a writer, write.
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But, I don’t think any arranger should ever write a drum part for a drummer because if a drummer can’t create his own Interpretation of the chart and he plays everything that’s written, he becomes mechanical; he has no freedom.
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I’m going to write a book, continue acting, continue motivational speaking and just share with people who I am and what I’ve learned in my second chance of life and pass it on to people in their first chance of life.
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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.’
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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.
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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.
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All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends, or family.
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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.
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When I write an original story I write about people I know first-hand and situations I’m familiar with. I don’t write stories about the nineteenth century.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Never write on a subject until you have read yourself full of it.
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Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.
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I don’t care who you are. When you sit down to write the first page of your screenplay, in your head, you’re also writing your Oscar acceptance speech.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It’s hard to be in the limelight and write songs that cater to fans that have expectations of you. We just want to write songs that we love, but all the different people with different ideas coming in make it difficult. We have to ask ourselves if we’re writing for the most important people: the fans.
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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.
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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.
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Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books.
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It’s a weird thing. Rick Springfield wrote ‘Jessie’s Girl,’ and he probably gets sick of talking about ‘Jessie’s Girl.’ The thing is, I didn’t write ‘Blurred Lines.’ I didn’t direct the music video. I’m really happy for the success, but it is kind of a funny thing to follow me around.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I write in a diary every night to collect my thoughts. It’s very therapeutic to songwrite, because it’s the same thing.
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I have to be inspired to write a song.
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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.
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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?
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I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It’s totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.
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I write because I have an innate need to. I write because I can’t do normal work. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it.
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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.
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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.
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I know some people might think it odd – unworthy 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.
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Still to this day, I don’t know when I write something whether it’s good or not.
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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.
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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.
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Write what you like; there is no other rule.
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A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
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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.
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I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.
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You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.
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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.
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I do want to go another way – to write something completely different.
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In a larger sense, we all write our own destiny.
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We try to write things that can be interpreted on lots of different levels. There’s not a right way or a wrong way… people can adventure a little.
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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.
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I think private school is much better at customer service and making the parents feel better, especially in Los Angeles. It’s almost like a spa for the parents where you drop your kids off, where they give you a beautifully baked thing and let the parents write their own newsletter about global warming.
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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.
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‘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.
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You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
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As a country, we can’t teach kids how to read and write when we got 18 years to do it. And that’s – that’s a disgrace.
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A song like ‘Heartbreaker,’ it’s a song about learning – it’s not necessarily a song about heartbreak. It’s more than that. We write those songs to relive how we got over something.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.
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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.
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The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.
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Pain’s always been the root of my music. I just write what I feel.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The heart and soul of good writing is research; you should write not what you know but what you can find out about.
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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.
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I have suffered most of the things I write about – or my friends have.
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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.
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The things I write about are the things that I am passionate about, interested in, and fighting for in my life.
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I don’t set out to write something. I more just write, and later on, I discover what it’s about.
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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.’
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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.
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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.
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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.
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If we’re trying to build a world-class News Feed and a world-class messaging product and a world-class search product and a world-class ad system, and invent virtual reality and build drones, I can’t write every line of code. I can’t write any lines of code.
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I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.
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To me, it’s all about the song. Songs are what make me excited. You hear a great song and you want to record it or get a great idea and you want to write it.
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I don’t write for an auditorium full of people. I don’t write for the microphone; I write for the page.
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Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.
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Life doesn’t just happen. You happen to life. You decide how you want to write your story.
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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.
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Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.
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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?
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The way to write is well, and how is your own business.
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A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.
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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.
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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.
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The way I work uses a very on-the-spot flow, and I write the lyrics and the music when I feel them coming.
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Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.
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Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.
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I tell you, gospel music is very uplifting. It’s great. It’s just a lot of fun to write, and it’s wonderful for the heart, soul, mind, and spirit. It’s just great.
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No one ever gets to write their ending, write their final script.
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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.’
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With love, there are so many layers to it that you can write all day about it. It’s not just heartbreak or falling in love; there’s so many different ways to look at it.
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When you write a story, it just flows and you don’t control it. It’s subconscious.
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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.
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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.
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I’d like to write some songs that are so good that nobody understands them. Not even myself.
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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.
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When asked, ‘How do you write?’ I invariably answer, ‘one word at a time.’
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It’s easy for me to write a horror movie about real stuff because my mind is always going there anyway.
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All my films are statements, especially when I write them.
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Any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.
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Every time I write a song my approach changes.
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I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind – and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.
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It’s never easy to write a song. It’s the most difficult thing I do.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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My job is to write opinions. I decide cases and write opinions. It is not to respond to idiocy and critics who make statements that are unfounded. That doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t have constructive criticisms, but it should be constructive.
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I have an ambition to write a great book, but that’s really a competition with myself. I’ve noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don’t really want to do anything. I can’t think of anything less worth striving for than fame.
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I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.
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Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
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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.
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How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
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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.
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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.
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A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.
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You do get some weirdos, but if there are any nice people out there who want to write to me pleasantly, then they’ll get a pleasant reply back!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It’s hard to write haiku. I write long, silly Indian poems.
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Anyone can write your own life story.
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I’ve learned any fool can write a bad ad, but it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.
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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.
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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.
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I always try to write a song, I never just want to write a record.
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You have to write what you know.
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Talent is a matter of quantity. Talent does not write on page, it writes three hundred.
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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.
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Half a century ago, the amazing courage of Rosa Parks, the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King, and the inspirational actions of the civil rights movement led politicians to write equality into the law and make real the promise of America for all her citizens.
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I write to understand as much as to be understood.
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My life has been such a blur since I was 18, 19 years old. I haven‘t even had time to contemplate my own life. By forcing yourself to write your life story you learn a great deal about yourself.
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If you can write DNA, you’re no longer limited to ‘what is’ but to what you could make.
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I write about my feelings, things that happen in my life and experiences.
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I can write a poem in 10 minutes. I like writing songs; I can write songs in 5 or 10 minutes. My concentration seems very short.
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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.
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A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.
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I think there is only one way to write fiction – alone, in a room, without interruption or any distraction.
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People take the longest possible paths, digress to numerous dead ends, and make all kinds of mistakes. Then historians come along and write summaries of this messy, nonlinear process and make it appear like a simple, straight line.
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I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.
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I can’t read, I don’t know how to write, my whole life has been one big fight.
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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.
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I write what I see; I paint what I am.
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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.
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My songs have always had hope and perseverance in them – I never write songs that have no escape hatch, no positivity.
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Write your goals down in detail and read your list of goals every day. Some goals may entail a list of shorter goals. Losing a lot of weight, for example, should include mini-goals, such as 10-pound milestones. This will keep your subconscious mind focused on what you want step by step.
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They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, ‘But doesn’t it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn’t it be set in New Guinea?’ And you say, ‘But it is a sophisticated romantic comedy set in Paris.’
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All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.
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For this purpose I determined to keep an account of the voyage, and to write down punctually every thing we performed or saw from day to day, as will hereafter appear.
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I write music. I’m in a band.
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Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.
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I may not be poetic but i’d love to write songs that convey my true feelings.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
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I don’t write with a machine. I write with a pen and a paper, which is what is most comfortable for me.
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I wouldn’t just have other people write songs and me go out and sing it. I would sit down with a guitar and write 11 or 12 good songs for an album and that is gonna take a long time.
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The thing I always default to is that I’ll always be here to write songs.
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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.
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Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.
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Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.
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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.
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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.
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As far as I know, if you take your time, write a good script and make a good film, then give the audience time, they will accept it.
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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.
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The only real reason to write professionally is that you love it enough.
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The one thing I’ve learned in the last ten years is that successful artists don’t get paid to write and sing songs, they get paid for the psychological roller coaster they’re going to have to ride. That’s the hard work.
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Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.
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I came from anonymity, and I will continue to write as a private pursuit.
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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.
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I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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My friend Akshay Upadhyay and I used to write poetry and read out to each other.
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Full-blooded romantic love I wouldn’t be able to write about.
366
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I don’t think anyone should write their autobiography until after they’re dead.
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We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.
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I have been commissioned to write an autobiography and I would be grateful to any of your readers who could tell me what I was doing between 1960 and 1974.
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I’d like to write the way Matisse paints.
375
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
376
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.
377
If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.
378
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.
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If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.
381
The moment I write out a cheque, it’s an asset I have written off.
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A man who wants time to read and write must let the grass grow long.
387
I suffer from stage fright, so I blabber on stage and stop midway through my performances. I cannot even write a cheque, as it makes me nervous. Being around people makes me nervous. But I’m very comfortable in front of the camera, and this I realised many films later.
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When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.
390
Who’s ever going to write a film in which I get the girl? Me!
391
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.
392
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The desire to write grows with writing.
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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.
396
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I became a script writer with absolutely no idea of how to write a script whatsoever. I still feel a bit of an outsider in that regard. If I can maintain that approach to screenwriting, it can continue to be enjoyable.
398
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.
399
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.
400
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.
401
We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death.
402
It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.
403
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.
404
The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.
405
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.
406
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.
407
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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.
409
Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
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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.
412
Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so.
413
I feel more comfortable each time I sit down to write, but I’m determined to get better and better.
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Anytime I have to write down what I do, I write yoga instructor. That’s what I do. My thing is yoga.
418
Nonfiction is both easier and harder to write than fiction. It’s easier because the facts are already laid out before you, and there is already a narrative arc. What makes it harder is that you are not free to use your imagination and creativity to fill in any missing gaps within the story.
419
Nothing I write ever has a moral. If it seems to a reader that there is one, that is unintentional.
420
I vividly remember my sixth-grade classroom. I remember what it smelled like, where I sat, what I could see out the window, and how I felt about things. Peel away my decrepit middle-aged exterior, and an important part of me is still twelve years old. It helps me when I sit down to write stories for kids.
421
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.
422
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Write your own stories.
424
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.
425
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.
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I write and rewrite and rewrite and write and like to turn in what I think is finished work.
428
History is dependent on the new generation to write a new chapter.
429
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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.
431
If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.
432
It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.
433
I could not write about ‘ordinary people‘ because I am not in the least interested in them.
434
435
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
436
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.
437
438
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.
439
440
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.
441
Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.
442
I write from my life, my experience. I’m selfish that way.
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444
How can any one paint who cannot grade colors? How can any one write poetry who has not learnt to hear and see?
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The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.
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It seems to me that after the second world war, Beckett finally realized he had something to write about.
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Write a page a day. It will add up.
453
I hated being a novelist when I was 20 – I had nothing to write about.
454
It really fascinates me what white people are allowed to write about.
455
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.
456
Write out the story – rapidly, fluently, and not too critically – following 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.
457
Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
458
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.
459
460
I don’t write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.
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Televison is time bound. Whereas a movie has time. You can’t write a script for television and keep it for one year.
464
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.
465
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.
466
To me, art and storytelling serve primal, spiritual functions in my daily life. Whether I’m telling a bedtime story to my kids or trying to mount a movie or write a short story or a novel, I take it very seriously.
467
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.
468
On a good day I write, all day.
469
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.
470
I don’t think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That’s why people write novels.
471
I’m a composer. I know nothing about money and commercial stuff. I just write music.
472
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.
473
I remember thinking during those times that I wanted to write in a way where there are no rules.
474
An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.
475
476
I write poetry on my iPhone. I’ve got about 100 poems on there.
477
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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.
480
The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.
481
Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped.
482
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.
483
484
I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.
485
It wasn’t books that inspired me to write. For me, inspiration was simple, immediate: I got it from eating, dancing, talking. I got it from life lived, things touched, from sensuality, from love of life, from our irrefutable connection to the earth.
486
487
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.
488
I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.
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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.
493
I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.
494
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.
495
I love movies, but I would love to write as many graphic novels as people would read from me.
496
497
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
498
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
499
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.
500
501
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.
502
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.
503
I look at you and I write down what I hear.
504
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.
505
I always write about the things that haunt me, the questions I have.
506
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508
The way I write, words can means lots of different things.
509
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.’
510
511
If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?
512
I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.
513
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.
514
How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy might have been useful to provide us with more modest, more genuine things, that had less pretensions: short stories, memoirs, notes, testimonials, or at any rate, books that are open, without a preconceived plan.
515
I stay way from that area, and there’s only so many songs you can write about love, sex and death.
516
517
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.
518
I think that I have every right to write a book. I think I’m interesting. I have perspective about me.
519
520
521
If you lined up 10 writers and asked them to write a movie about Steve Jobs, you’d get 10 very different movies.
522
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524
People would tell me, especially after my marriage to Prince, ‘You need to write a book because you’ve had a crazy life.’
525
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527
Life is God’s novel. Let him write it.
528
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.
529
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.
530
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.
531
532
533
Today I must write a paragraph or a page better than I did yesterday.
534
535
It has always been a goal of mine to climb Kilimanjaro, so that’s definitely happening, and I may write a memoir about it. When I was 25, I tried to trek to Everest Base Camp, but I got sick and ended up being carried out of Dingboche on the back of my Sherpa. So Kilimanjaro would represent a redemption of sorts.
536
It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.
537
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.
538
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.
539
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.
540
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.
541
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.
542
He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do: and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him.
543
544
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.
545
I tend to write about my anxieties – it’s what I’m afraid will happen. And I write a story working it out.
546
547
Even if you only want to write science fiction, you should also read mysteries, poetry, mainstream literature, history, biography, philosophy, and science.
548
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.
549
550
551
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.
552
553
I’ll have to get people to write songs for me right now until my own writing comes around.
554
555
I’ve taken a stand against religion for as long I’ve been able to write and think.
556
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.
557
Anyone who believes you can’t change history has never tried to write his memoirs.
558
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.
559
560
You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.
561
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.
562
It’s disheartening to write goals from year to year, looking back only to see you are in the same place. You can make so many promises that you get sick of yourself, but what is it that God can’t do?
563
Although I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.
564
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.
565
566
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.
567
568
Talent is like a faucet, while it is open, one must write.
569
570
A lot of the time when I write about the person that I love, I feel like I’m writing about New York.
571
My grandfather used to write one sentence every day in his journal: ‘I love Anne more than ever today.’ I think that was his meditation – keeping him in his marriage, and also his appreciation for it. It was very touching.
572
We need to not write off vaping as a safe alternative to smoking. It’s not safe.
573
I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.
574
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.
575
576
577
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.
578
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.
579
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.
580
581
I write for all the peoples of all the world.
582
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.
583
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.
584
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.
585
Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.
586
I don’t have to go into outer space to write about an astronaut.
587
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.
588
Well, now that he’s finished one building, he’ll go write four books about it.
589
I really don’t have anything urgent to say, and I think you shouldn’t write unless you have something urgent to say. Sometimes that troubles me, and sometimes I don’t really care.
590
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.
591
I write because writing is the gift God has given me to help people in the world.
592
As writers, we are sketching people all the time when we write fiction.
593
594
I write music with an exclamation point!
595
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.
596
597
If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.
598
599
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
600
When people write comedy from neutrality, it just gets kind of silly.
601
Usually when I write a script, I have in mind some real people that I’m writing about, who don’t always act in the film afterward.
602
603
A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.
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