Quotes on Writing

What I react against in other people's work, as a filmgoer, is when I see something in a movie that I feel is supposed to make me feel emotional, but I don't believe the filmmaker shares that emotion. They just think the audience will. And I think you can feel that separation. So any time I find myself writing something that I don't really respond to, but I'm telling myself, 'Oh yes, but the audience is going to like this,' then I know I'm on the wrong track and I just throw it out.

I love contemporary poetry because it moves between what we call poetry and what we call philosophy. It joins these fields and makes writing more natural, as in how it is lived in the person. We don’t separate thinking from feeling in real life, so why should we separate it in writing?

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

I think I am probably in love with silence, that other world. And that I write, in some way, to negotiate seriously with it.

Racist writing is a craft failure.

Just write, get better, keep writing, keep getting better. It's the only thing you can control.

I was indeed a snob, if you agree with this definition: 'A person who believes that their tastes in a particular area are superior to those of other people.' I do believe that. Not superior to all other people, but to some, most probably including those who think Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen is a great film. That is not simply ego on my part. It is a faith that after writing and teaching about films for more than 40 years, my tastes are more evolved than those of a fanboy.

To say that George Lucas cannot write a love scene is an understatement; greeting cards have expressed more passion.

We never fit in completely to [the punk] scene because we were writing love songs that were heartfelt and endearing. Some of the punks didn't know what to make of us, but I finally realized that was what made us punk. We sang what we meant, from the heart, and didn't worry about what anyone was going to think.

I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word - for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals.

Writing is a weapon and it’s more powerful than a fist could ever be.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

Before I write I let my mind go blind and let the lord do his thing.

The Sopranos all came down to the writing. I wouldn't have been on for as long as I was if the writing weren't so good.

Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.

It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open.

Don't be too precious or attached to anything you write. Let things be malleable. For sketch writers, remember they're called sketches for a reason. They're not called oil paintings. Some of them are going to stink. You have to let them stink.