Writing Quotes · Page 541

You always feel like a hack and a fraud when you're writing. It's just how it goes.

— Mary H.K. Choi

The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.

— Rex Stout

For me, naming bands was the forerunner to really writing lyrics, because I work off titles.

— Jim Capaldi

I don't remember writing anything until I wrote my college application.

— Tony Gilroy

There is only one plot-things are not what they seem.

— Jim Thompson

“A writer’s primary goal is to make sense. The bookstore’s is to make cents.”

— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

My dream was, and always had been, to write a book. To be a writer.

— Deb Caletti

A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.

— Vladimir Nabokov

I like writing about the issues we all bump up against as we get older, but I try to present them in…

— Lisi Harrison

I spent 11 years at 'The Daily Show,' and I learned everything there about how to write funny, how to write funny…

— David Javerbaum

You get used to it I suppose, but it's always a bit disappointing to see a comic referred to as 'by [writer]'…

— Jamie McKelvie

“Chomsky's writings are "classics" in Mark Twain's sense: something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”

— Stephen Pinker

I will consistently strive to learn by what I hear, see, and feel. I will write down the important things I learn,…

— Richard G. Scott

Stop in the middle of a sentence, leaving a rough edge for you to start from the nest day - that way,…

— Cory Doctorow

You run into people who want to write poetry who don't want to read anything in the tradition. That's like wanting to…

— Gary Snyder

Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality.

— Frank Zappa

We can carry the burden of hurt throughout our lives. We can make the hurt that we have experienced the defining aspect…

— Desmond Tutu

I don't watch a whole lot of stand up. Mainly I prefer to read writers; they make me laugh the most. Something…

— Dylan Moran

I think television is moving more into movies, particularly with serialization and almost cinematic proportions and expectations. A show like 'Game of…

— Bryan Singer

“She sighed once, wishing she had a talent for the details of telling stories. She wasn't bad at themes, she mused, but…

— Nora Roberts

When I was very young and first worked in Hollywood, the films had bred in me one sole ambition: to get away…

— Anita Loos

“I have lived my life in pursuit of the remade world... I believe in truth. I believe in truth denied any use…

— Dorothy Allison

Since I was a teenager, I had wanted to come to the United States to establish my name as a writer and…

— Osama Alomar

The prejudice is still there, but it's breaking down. You have writers like Michael Chabon and The Yiddish Policemen's Union. He's a…

— George R. R. Martin

Life - No, I've nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week.

— E. M. Forster

All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard. What else?

— William S. Burroughs

A writer can't afford to just focus on writing and leave marketing aside in today's competitive market.

— Amish Tripathi

I never have the feeling that I actually know what I'm doing or anything that I'm writing is any good.

— Sharon Cameron

Writing an upbeat aphorism is a temptation, but decorum forbids.

— Mason Cooley

“A paucity of material can open up just as many possibilities.”

— Sara Sheridan

History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.

— George Santayana

I am a recluse at present & do nothing but write & read & read & write

— Katherine Mansfield

We simply write the kind of music we enjoy most and hope that our audience will enjoy it too.

— Benny Anderson

I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.

— Christopher Hitchens

You can write 16 plays and not make as much money as you did doing one movie.

— Sam Shepard

Writing has enriched my life in ways I never imaged.

— Augusten Burroughs

To write honestly and with all our powers is the least we can do, and the most.

— Eudora Welty

“If you’re going to write about love, write it in pencil.”

— Han Yujoo

Writing novels is the hardest thing I've ever done, including digging irrigation ditches.

— Thomas Harris

I have yet to write that one song that defines my career.

— Sheryl Crow