Quotes about writing
writing ambitious radio
I was never ambitious. I just wanted to have quiet, calm, listen to public radio and say, hello, how are you? Sit down, rest. But I had an early partner named Fred Freeman, a wonderful writer who I met at Northwestern. And I thought we were doing very well with "Jack Paar," and he said, no, we got to go to Hollywood. We got to write sitcom. It's the coming thing. Garry Marshall
writing comedian clubs
I always remember writing a page of jokes for a comedian and handing it to him backstage at a club and he read it and then took his cigarette lighter and lit the page on.
writing satisfaction feels
There's no better satisfaction than writing. I feel that writing is the best and everything else comes with it
writing frustration people
I don't associate work with feelings of satisfaction. Rather, guilt, frustration, and resentment of people who write better than I do. Garrison Keillor
writing laptops impossible
I write on a laptop, so it's impossible to count drafts anymore.
writing giving want
You don't want to get that sort of sound in your writing that boing that gives you away.
writing dark talking
For me, the monologue was the favorite thing I had done in radio. It was based on writing, but in the end it was radio, it was standing up and leaning forward into the dark and talking, letting words come out of you.
writing thinking people
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.
writing thinking editors
We writers don't really think about whether what we write is good or not. It's too much to worry about. We just put the words down, trying to get them right, operating by some inner sense of pitch and proportion, and from time to time, we stick the stuff in an envelope and ship it to an editor.
writing ironic young-writers
A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.
writing tragic
The life of a writer is tragic: the more we advance, the farther there is to go and the more there is to say, the less time there is to say it. Gabrielle Roy
writing cutting knives
It is my contention that a really great novel is made with a knife and not a pen. A novelist must have the intestinal fortitude to cut out even the most brilliant passage so long as it doesn't advance the story. Frank Yerby
writing expression atmosphere
Such expression is impossible in a cramped atmosphere. As I have no desire to offer civil disobedience I cannot write freely. As the author of satyagraha I cannot, consistently with my profession, suppress the vital part of myself for the sake of being able to write on permissible subjects. ... It would be like dealing with the trunk without the head. Mahatma Gandhi
writing three needs
I typically will work on a lyric in a three-ring binder. On the right side, I'll write the lyric, and on the left side, I put in alternate things...and things that might be alternates or improvements. I'll turn the page and do it again. I'll turn the page and do it again, or incorporate the improvements. Eventually, I end up with some material, and often it needs to be ordered. James Taylor
writing mean realizing
But it's only after you've played it on the road 20 or 30 times that it becomes really finished and polished...and you realize what it means, and you get the phrasing right.
writing opposites pages
I tend to write out the first iteration of a lyric here and then go over here and make variations on it, on the page opposite.
writing elements singers
To be a musician, especially a singer-songwriter - well, you don't do that if you have a thriving social life. You do it because there's an element of alienation in your life.
writing guitar-music guitar
I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.
writing phones done
There'll come a writing phase where you have to defend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.
writing-songs pretending songwriting
I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.
writing interesting challenges
I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good. James Thurber
writing drawing long
I drew pictures rapidly and with few lines, because I had to write most of the pieces, too, and couldn't monkey long with the drawings. The divine urge was no higher than that.
writing editing editors
Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counselling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, 'How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?' and avoid 'How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?'
writing justice glare
When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.
writing men
Neither man nor God is going to tell me what to write. James T. Farrell
writing thinking comforting
I typically don't adopt the ascetic approach. In part, that's because I do use the Net for research even as I'm writing (to check facts, or so on). But I think it's also because I find the possibility of distraction comforting. James Surowiecki
writing pieces delay
I tend to delay writing by doing more research - it's really the act of writing the piece that I have the hardest time with.
writing thinking hard-times
I tend to have a hard time working on pieces long before they're due. That's why I think the fact that I write a column is really good for me - the column has to be done, and there's no getting around it.
writing thinking perfect
I started in business journalism from the outside, so when I started writing about markets and business, I was struck by the fact that markets seemed to work well even though people are often irrational, lack good information and are not perfect in the way they think about decisions.
writing men thinking
One would think that in writing about literary men and matters there would be no difficulty in finding a title for one's essay, or that any embarrassment which might arise would be from excess of material. I find this, however, far from being the case. James Payn
writing fiction stories
If it's commercial fiction that you want to write, it's story, story, story. You've got to get a story where if you tell it to somebody in a paragraph, they'll go, "Tell me more." And then when you start to write it, they continue to want to read more. And if you don't, it won't work. James Patterson
writing larger-than-life
I write larger than life. It's what I do.
writing joy four
I guess I write four or five hours a day, but I do it seven days a week. It's very disciplined, yes, but it's joy for me.