Writing Quotes · Page 441

Some people say 'I want to be a writer,' and some people say, 'I want to write.'

— Robin Hobb

Being a writer was never a choice, it was an irresistible compulsion.

— Walter Jon Williams

As writers, we only aim to please. Or we aimed to please as children, which is why we became writers.

— Maurissa Tancharoen

I've really tried to strip my writing of as many adjectives and adverbs as I possibly can.

— Erik Larson

“Somebody told me I'm a writer. I believed them. Now I regret it.”

— Stefanos Livos

“Stand at the top of a cliff and jump off and build your wings on the way down.”

— Ray Bradbury

Maybe it is something to do with age, but I have become fonder of poetry than of prose.

— Aung San Suu Kyi

I still don't know if I can write songs. I don't think anyone ever knows if they can write songs.

— Ellie Goulding

There are a few Irish writers who have a very strong influence on me, especially on the 'Take Me to Church' EP.

— Hozier

I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the…

— Philip Roth

Because of who I am, and how open I am, there's something inherently political about just writing love songs.

— Rostam Batmanglij

For a fiction writer, a storyteller, the world is full of stories, and when a story is there, it's there, and you…

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“the “data scientist,” which combines the skills of the statistician, software programmer, infographics designer, and storyteller.”

— Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

In general, writers who talk to their colleagues and neighbors constantly about their own writing seem to me pretty insufferable. I try…

— Ken Liu

Needless to say, there was no one around remotely fitting the description of a normal person: I was at a writing conference.

— Anne Lamott

It almost seems I was writing two separate books, the first one about the time before I went on the court and…

— John Paul Stevens

All writers are crazy. So never mind what the editors and your family and your critique group tells you. Submit your manuscripts…

— MaryJanice Davidson

“A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering.…

— John Steinbeck

Are you a storyteller, Thomas Covenant?" Absently he replied, "I was, once." "And you gave it up? Ah, that is as sad…

— Stephen R. Donaldson

Will there never come a season Which shall rid us from the curse? Of a prose which knows no reason And an…

— James Kenneth Stephen

I found I'm quite happy working on a sentence for an hour or more, searching for the right phrase, the right word.…

— Harriet Doerr

In making movies, time is so short-because it is so expensive-that we tend to neglect the place from which the best ideas…

— Mike Nichols

I'm not the most talented writer in the world. I know that. But I also know that I'm disciplined, that I work…

— David B. Coe

I have realized that mystery is what keeps people away, and I've grown tired of smoke and mirrors. I yearn for the…

— Amy Poehler

“But above all, an author must write passionately and edit passionately.”

— Paul Collins

The writer creates the role on the page and then the actor takes it and makes it their own.

— Joanna Kerns

To write a poem is like trying to catch a lizard without its tail falling off.

— Lawrence Durrell

Don't be a writer. Writing is an escape from something. You be a scientist.

— Sinclair Lewis

I've loved doing 'E.R.' for the quality of the writing and the great people I get to work with.

— Julie Bowen

It's bad writing, however naturalistic it's written, that's where you have to do your best acting.

— Adam Brody

Never give advice to your children unless you have it in writing and notarized.

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand!

— Herman Melville

“Our profession is dreadful, writing corrupts the soul.”

— Leo Tolstoy

History written by the victims trickles down in the form of folklore.

— Puneet Issar

Music is very influential to my writing, as are theater and film.

— Jessica Hagedorn

My writing comes from ideas that make a sound in my heart.

— Katherine Paterson

When you're a songwriter and you click with someone, you tend to want to keep writing with that person.

— Billy Sherwood

I write lyrics based on music, on a musical flow, and what sounds good at the time.

— Mike Patton

“You need to take some acting classes to learn to hide your huge crush on my husband better”

— Mary Papas

Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge