Quotes by category:Writing

I had brief glimpses of emotional catharsis while writing. I remember reading something Philip Roth wrote about how he writes every single day, but it's almost as if he has amnesia every morning - he has almost zero confidence that anything will come but he just sits down and plugs away. And at the end of the day it feels like a miracle: "How did I do that?" I had a similar experience where it was just about putting in the hours and being present.

reading writing morning

Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people.

purpose writing people

Naturally I feel no shame in writing these things because of the time which separates the moment when they are written--when only I can see them--from the moment when they will be read by other people, a moment which I feel will never come. By then I could have had an accident or died; a war or a revolution could have broken out. This delay makes it possible for me to write today, in the same way I used to lie in the scorching sun for a whole day at sixteen, or make love wihout contraceptives at twenty: without thinking about the consequences

writing war lying

I have to be by myself when I write, and I never know how long it will take. It is like making butter. Sometimes it will come in a few minutes, and sometimes I have to churn away for hours.

Annie Fellows Johnston

writing sometimes long

I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry. I want to... by Annie Lennox

I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry. I want to see my children grow up well.

growing-up writing children

I also started writing songs because I had this burning activity in my heart and had to express myself.

heart writing song

If someone says something unpleasant, I can't say it doesn't smart a bit. It always does. Someone can take a really nasty swipe if they want because it kind of feels powerful for a person to write in a paper and get that thing out there.

smart powerful writing

I knew that I wanted to be a singer/songwriter when I was much younger and, um, I've been able to, you know, to realize that dream and I'm very pleased with that...I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry...Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing emotion-very powerful emotions.

powerful dream writing

Everywhere I go, I meet people ready for change. People who are fed up with the exhaustion that comes from devoting one's life to the work-watch-spend treadmill. People who know in their hearts that it's wrong to treat the planet and whole groups of people as disposable. People who are challenging the bogus stories we've been fed for years and are writing their own about hope and love and working together to build a better future for everyone.

heart writing years

Just recognizing and naming that many of the things we treat as historical fact are stories can help erode their power over our sense of identity and thinking. If they are stories rather than "truth," we can write new stories that better represent the country we aspire to be. Our new stories can be about diverse people working together to overcome challenges and make life better for all, about figuring out how to live sustainably on this one planet we share, and on deep respect for cooperation, fairness, and equity instead of promoting hyper-competitive individualism.

writing country thinking

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

reading writing teacher

What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, 'Write what you know.' It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don't develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one.

stupid self writing

If you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place.

landscape writing character

Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of... by Annie Proulx

Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

reading writing teacher

I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to... by Annie Proulx

I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.

space writing thinking

But the only rhyme he could summon for 'out' was 'sauerkraut,' which lacked poetic glory. He let it go. The right line would come in time. That was the thing about poetry. It crept up through the draws and coulees of the brain.

let-it-go brain writing

Writing and working with producers is like dating - it sounds strange to say that, but you have to test people out. You have to be like: 1) I like your music. 2) I like you, you're a good person. 3) Let's hang out and see if we can work together. And that is where music comes from.

writing i-like-you people

All I can do in my writing is to stimulate a certain amount of thought, clarify some technical facts and date my work. But when I preach sharpness, brilliancy, scale, etc., I am just mouthing words, because no words can really describe those terms and qualities it takes the actual print to say, “here it is.

etc quality writing

I am probably afraid that some spectator will not understand my photography - therefore I proceed to make it really less understandable by writing defensibly about it.

spectators photography writing

Success is being artistically fulfilled and happy. You can't control how people see your movie or how much money it makes...and the same thing with music. When I'm writing a song or I'm in the studio, those memories, that's epic.

writing song memories