Writing Quotes · Page 317

Books are never finished, They are merely abandoned.

— Oscar Wilde

Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it.

— Maya Angelou

It's the writing, not the being read, that excites me. Joy is in the doing.

— Virginia Woolf

Writing is solitary. You spend so much time alone and in your own mind, telling stories.

— Ruth Ozeki

Anybody can lead a frivolous life. A frivolous writer, however, must have taste and intelligence.

— Mason Cooley

I write much better in the nonconfines of the early morning than I do the clutter of the day.

— Rod Serling

In a rough way the short story writer is to the novelist as a cabinetmaker is to a house carpenter.

— Annie Proulx

“Poetry is the most potent of all literary forms. If prose is candle light, poetry is dawn.”

— Abhijit Naskar

I didn't just write about boys and relationships like usual. I wrote about other things: rock 'n' roll, nostalgia, Hello Kitty.

— Avril Lavigne

“A writer is not a writer because he has written some books. A writer is not a writer because he teaches literature.…

— Charles Bukowski

“Small details are a vital part of allowing a reader to make an imaginative connection with long dead historical figures.”

— Sara Sheridan

The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader's heart.

— Susan Sontag

Vegas is like the old definition of writing: though I don't enjoy writing, I love having written. Though I didn't enjoy Vegas,…

— J. R. Moehringer

As long as a man had the courage to reject what society told him to do, he could live life on his…

— Paul Auster

Things like guitars and ukuleles, you should never part with it, because there will probably be good, healthy times spent, just playing…

— Eddie Vedder

I do have screenplays I've written that never saw the light of day, but I don't usually go back to them. When…

— Joss Whedon

“talking about the “meaning” of a story, we need to be careful not to diminish it, impoverish it. A story can say…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing… For he does his work alone and…

— Ernest Hemingway

It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about…

— Anonymous

I've been in the songwriting circuit as well. I've been in a couple writing camps where there are seven top writers or…

— Lzzy Hale

We were always in the shadows of the stuff that was getting more attention. So people learned to listen to us slowly…

— Matt Berninger

Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a book in a…

— Annie Dillard

Todd and Tim [Tobias] write the music, and I come up with the melodies and lyrics. I call it the Ohio Rock…

— Robert Pollard

“She was also sure that having experienced the act first hand would probably benefit her writing. If anything she should have sex…

— R.L. Mathewson

I only sound intelligent when there's a good script writer around.

— Christian Bale

When I'm writing, I mean what I'm saying - there's a lot of me in each song.

— Imelda May

I don't think the press are vindictive. They can write what they want

— Mike Gatting

The writers could always do an about-face and change everything

— Vera Farmiga

“If you must break a rule, break it on purpose. That includes this rule.”

— Josh Steimle

If you write to me and it takes a day for me to write back, don't take it personally.

— Daniel Ek

Writing and directing your own film, for me, has been the best experience of my life.

— Nicholas Jarecki

I like people who can write and sing, and play an instrument.

— Sixto Rodriguez

No writer, however popular, disdains a reader, however humble.

— Vera Caspary

In trying to cross over to the mainstream, some people stopped writing what they witnessed.

— Melvin Van Peebles

“Writing books is a socially acceptable form of getting naked in public.”

— Paulo Coelho

You just don't wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

— Bob Dylan

I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Younger writers and smaller writers need to live and get by. They need to be paid. It has to be fair.

— Nicola Roberts

“The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes. ”

— Agatha Christie

It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.

— Stendhal