Writing Quotes · Page 268

“Writing a novel is the closest thing a male writer will ever get to the experience of childbirth.”

— Norman Mailer

If you haven't written a novel by the time you're forty you never will!

— Richard Yates

“How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or seen anybody die?”

— Sylvia Plath

Can you rap better than a person that constantly writes? How he always run across new words. - Loverboi

— Kenneth Melvin Jr

I loved doing 'Frisky Business.' I didn't come up with it. I think John Oliver and the writers did.

— Jessica Williams

In writing one draws in the rest, the forgotten parts.

— Edmund White

Even in so-called realist or conventional writing there can be defamiliarization.

— Leni Zumas

The writer is always courted by invitations from the all-too- familiar.

— Mason Cooley

In pure literature, the writers of the eighteenth century achieved, indeed, many triumphs; but their great, their peculiar, triumphs were in the…

— Lytton Strachey

It's my job, too, to keep up with pop culture and what the kids are into 'cause you don't want to sound…

— R. L. Stine

Fear is felt by writers at every level. Anxiety accompanies the first word they put on paper and the last.

— Ralph Keyes

I don't write on topics that require a lot of urgency. But in 'Stiff,' I wanted to change people's hearts about organ…

— Mary Roach

Food becomes very secondary when you're trying to write songs, funnily enough. I think a good snack and a good tea break…

— Griff

If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of…

— Fernando Pessoa

First, I started with music singing, writing songs, playing music. Later, I got into acting. I'm not a brilliant musician or a…

— Murray Head

It's something you can actually control. With writing, it feels like it's given to you, and when the good stuff hits, it…

— Donald Miller

I think that we're in a really amazing time, where there are really a lot of really fantastic female actresses and comedians.…

— Whitney Cummings

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing,…

— Ornette Coleman

“I leave you now at the bottom of your own stair, at half after midnight, with a pad, a pen, and a…

— Ray Bradbury

“Don't let the covers fool you. Books, like lives, are wiggling, evolving, living things. They're not bound by pages or authors or…

— Kelly G. Wilson

“If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies — Tolkien didn’t read big…

— Neil Gaiman

Research is necessary. However, you need to make sure you don't fall into its trap. You need to have time left for…

— Jaume Cabre

I believe that half the trouble in the world comes from people asking 'What have I achieved?' rather than 'What have I…

— Walter Farley

It is certainly true that writers take a stance at some variance from organized religion. This has not always been true. But…

— Eavan Boland

Never take back what you've written. You never know where it'll take you.

— Eugenia Vela

The writer's job is the job of a clown …the clown who also talks about sorrow.

— Kenzaburo Oe

Women can spin very well; but they cannot make a good book of cookery.

— Samuel Johnson

Another older writer that had a huge influence on me is Chekhov. More contemporarily, it's hard to say.

— Chad Harbach

I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.

— J. D. Salinger

I used to think, 'How can I write my life story? I'm still living it.

— Frank Serpico

A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.

— Jean de la Bruyere

We were writing songs about girls when we still thought girls had cooties.

— Isaac Hanson

I have a lot of respect for people who write a whole book because I've heard it will kill you.

— Mary H.K. Choi

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

— Joyce Carol Oates

It's always helpful to put things down on paper. That's why I started writing.

— Brett Young

I'll have to get people to write songs for me right now until my own writing comes around.

— Andy Gibb

Writing a novel resembles a journey with only the sketchiest of maps.

— Ian Mcewan

Sophocles was a general: a warrior writing plays about military situations.

— Adam Driver

Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?

— Jacqueline Woodson

“Life is what you make it. But if you can't make it as you want it... write it.”

— Anonymous