Quotes on Writing

I'm tempted to say, 'Writing treatments is like designing a film by hiring six million monkeys to tear out pages of an encyclopedia, then you put the pages through a paper-shredder, randomly grab whatever intact lines are left, sing them in Italian to a Spanish deaf-mute, and then make story decisions with the guy via conference call.' But no... compared to writing treatments, that makes sense, too.

I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.

‎A day in which I don't write leaves a taste of ashes.

It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.

For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.

It is human nature to look away from illness. We don't enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality. That's why writing on the Internet has become a lifesaver for me. My ability to think and write have not been affected. And on the Web, my real voice finds expression.

Writers kid themselves-about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type with your toes-it is just work.

The chief virtue that language can have is clarity.

He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the jugular. Active verbs that danced and raced on the page.

The hardest part of writing is not to get the ideas but to remember, why it is important to get them.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

I write and sing about whatever I am able to understand and feel. I feel that it is healthier to look out at the world through a window than through a mirror. Otherwise, all you see is yourself and whatever is behind you.

To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread. The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing.

The expression to write something down suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.

There's a film you write, there's a film you shoot, and there's a film that you cut - and they're all different.

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

If you don't wake up and have your own thing, whether it's writing or reading or traveling or acting or dancing or singing or being a mother or a father, something that drives you, then it's all worth nothing. One of the key elements in happiness is purpose.

I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.

The single most important thing you can do politically for gay rights is to come out. Not to write a letter to your congressman but to come out.

It's being a grown up, which I never figured out how to do, scrubbing the tub, and remembering to eat and shampoo my hair. It's the basics: I can write a whole book, but I cannot handle the basics.