Quotes by category:Writing

Grandchildren now don't write a thank you for the Christmas presents. They are walking on their pants with their cap on backward, listening to the Enema Man and Snoopy, Snoopy Poop Dog.

Alan K. Simpson

dog writing thank-you

Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing dee... by Alan Kay

Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to

reading writing art

Having an intelligent secretary does not get rid of the need to read, write, and draw, etc. In a well functioning world, tools and agents are complementary.

intelligent doe writing

I think for many songwriter/performers, you need to go off by yourself and write the songs to begin with, but then you need people to bring them to life. So you have to be comfortable with solitude and also with being very social.

writing song thinking

For some musicians it becomes self-reflexive to think, "I have to write some of my kind of songs now."

writing song thinking

After the Beatles and Dylan, there's this assumption that you are a singer-songwriter, or that if someone else is writing your rhymes, you're a fake rapper.

rapper fake writing

I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie. I also like the magic realist writers, such as Borges and Marquez, and feel that interesting truths can be learned about our world by exploring highly distorted worlds.

our-world writing long

My writings are an exploration, and I think a lot of writers would tell you this, but in writing, you're not simply putting down things that are already known to you. You're actually discovering in the writing process, you're actually creating knowledge.

creating writing thinking

Franz Kafka is an idea person. His books begin and end in ideas. Ideas have always been important to me in my writing. To the point that I have to be careful that they don't take over.

writing book ideas

In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully. You can't let your characters just be mouthpieces for your ideas. They have to live and breathe on their own.

writing character ideas

For my students who are trying to learn the craft of writing in a writing class - contemporary literature is what's most useful.

writing class trying

Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea. If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing.

writing character thinking

I have always loved magic realism as a form of writing. I have also been fascinated for a long time with the intersection of science and religion.

magic-realism writing long

In fiction writing, I would say there are several different strands that have been woven through my own writing, and each influenced by a different group of writers.

groups writing fiction

Every essay - the subject matter of every essay - is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.

matter views writing

One day I'm going to write a book about osprey. It has really gotten deep into my bloodstream. So when you ask what else I do, I feel like this is part of what I do....is to watch these birds.

writing bird book

I think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration. A book, especially a longer book, it's a different kind of force that pushes you through it. It's a vision of the whole thing.

inspiration writing book

When I used to play golf. It's a terrible miserable game. It's incredibly frustrating. In 18 holes you make 150 horrible shots off in the woods, in the water...You make one good shot and it brings you back the next time. With writing a long book there has to be at least one bit that has some magic in it that you can go back to.

writing golf book

If you write enough musicals you pretty much have a sense of where they should go, what you'll need, and when; how to pull people on that journey.

journey writing people

The best parts about writing a show are [its] first, second and 10th anniversaries. Everything else is relative levels of hell.

levels writing firsts