Explore Quotes on Writing

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

'Firecracker' was such a fun song to write and to perform.

It's not like I'm anti-China. I just think it's ridiculous that we allow them to do what they're doing to this country, with the manipulation of the currency, that you write about and understand, and all of the other things that they do.

Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.

There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

I've been writing on my own. It's like Roger Miller used to say, every now and then, like a dog having puppies, you have to crawl under the house and do it yourself.

You know, I used to say, when people say, 'How do you think about what to write about in the poems every week?' And I say, 'Well, I have to turn it in on Monday, so on Sunday nights I turn the shower to iambic pentameter and it sort of works out that way.'

When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.

If it's inappropriate to write about, if there's nothing funny about it, then it's not funny.

What interests me is what you might call vernacular writing, writing that connects you to a place.

Sometimes God writes straightforward in twisted lines.

Good writing is good writing, but that doesn't mean you can't orchestrate it or tweak it.

Early British pop was helped tremendously by the writing of Bob Dylan who had proved you could write about political and quite controversial subjects. Certainly what we did followed on from what was happening with the angry young men in the theatre.

I just could not believe that 30 years later we're still looking at people who are supposed to write little 2-minute pop that when they actually try to do something that's a little bit more they regard it as pretentious.

An individual developer like me cares about writing the new code and making it as interesting and efficient as possible. But very few people want to do the testing.

Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.