Writing Quotes · Page 316

It's all through the actors; I cannot write in that idiom

— Woody Allen

When you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world

— Julian Barnes

Tyranny and fantasy both like to write everyone else's lines.

— James Richardson

I believe that if we are going to write about life and death, we should not do it from the cheap seats.

— Rick Bragg

“It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer.”

— Gerald Brenan

If I was a waitress, I was too tired at the end of the day when I came home to try to…

— Ann Patchett

If you are any kind of writer at all, you are in all of your writings.

— David M. Evans

All songs are already perfectly written. It is the writer's job to find it and get it on paper.

— Beth Nielsen Chapman

The only reason I didn't kill myself after I read the reviews of my first book was because we have two rivers…

— Wilfrid Sheed

“For the fiction writer himself the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction.”

— Flannery O'Connor

First of all you are a writer, a writer is what you are, so it doesn't actually stop the moment you leave…

— Terry Pratchett

“I asked Ring Lardner the other day how he writes his short stories, and he said he wrote a few widely separated…

— Harold Ross

“Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re…

— Margaret Atwood

I have a deep attachment to the natural world. It's a major influence on my writing, and as I look out over…

— Pat Mora

I love to write honest songs that name real people, then get up onstage and live out those emotions in front of…

— Taylor Swift

I identify with the characters very closely. At the same time that I'm outside, writing, I'm also inside, experiencing, and it can…

— Stephen King

I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing. Dumbo got airborne with the help of a magic feather;…

— Stephen King

You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff…

— Ray Bradbury

There have been days where I've had two writers' rooms or three writers' rooms going, and you walk back and forth. And…

— Noah Hawley

“There would seem to be four stages in the composition of a story. First comes the germ of the story, then a…

— Malcolm Cowley

January 8 has been a lucky day for me. I have started all my books on that day, and all of them…

— Isabel Allende

If you're going to cheat and take people's history and you're not writing the Bible, you ain't really so great. But if…

— James McBride

The High Divide, a novel about a family in peril, is haunting and tense but leavened by considerable warmth and humanity. Lin…

— Benjamin Percy

it is not unusual to hate great writers before we learn to love them. Because they have created something that did not…

— Erica Jong

Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.

— Anonymous

I don't see how you can write anything of value if you don't offend someone.

— Marvin Harris

“Keep rechewing. Like a cow. Use all your creative stomachs.”

— Elizabeth M. Lawrence

The writer can only explore the inner space of his characters by perceptively navigating his own.

— Peter De Vries

A house becomes a home when you can write, 'I love you' on the furniture.

— Rick Sutter

It is the gossip columnist's business to write about what is none of his business.

— Louis Kronenberger

Hope but not enthusiasm is the proper state for the writer.

— James Salter

I love being able to be a writer. That's what I moved to New York to be.

— John Searles

Well, language seems to be something that obsesses me. I'm always writing about it.

— Lisel Mueller

I am human, when people write bad stuff about me it bothers me, but I know that will never end.

— Curt Schilling

I might be into writing... I'd like to try it someday. I always come up with some good ideas.

— Kevin Dillon

I want people to notice my writing abilities are real and that I'm not just stuck in one situation.

— R. Kelly

“I wish my brain had an off switch. Maybe that way I could get some sleep.”

— Christy Hall

I'm such a coward that unless I get a good writer, I don't want to make a picture.

— Howard Hawks

A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.

— Anonymous

Finish what you start. Keep submitting until it sells.

— Robert A. Heinlein