Quotes on Writing

Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

There are five things to write songs about: I'm leaving you. You're leaving me. I want you. You don't want me. I believe in something. Five subjects, and 12 notes. For all that, we musicians do pretty well.

I do try to separate my personal activism - showing up at a demonstration or something - from what I write.

Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.

A lot of scientists hate writing. Most scientists love being in the lab and doing the work and when the work is done, they are finished.

If you said good-bye to me tonight, There would still be music left to write.

I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14 - to meet women.

But do not give it to a lawyer's clerk to write, for they use a legal hand that Satan himself will not understand.

The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to the education and rank.

I have a mess in my head sometimes, and there's something very satisfying about putting it into words. Certainly it's not something that you're in charge of, necessarily, but writing about it, putting it into your words, can be a very powerful experience.

This is the gift all writers seek-to write language that incandesces yet does not melt.

People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up.

Above all, have a good time. If you aren’t enjoying writing it, you can hardly expect someone else to enjoy reading it.

There are places where writing is acting and acting is writing. I'm not so interested in the divisions. I'm interested in the way things cross over.

I have written it before and am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that I would be a tenth of what I am today -- whatever that may be. In my teenage years, his writings awoke me to the possibilities of language. His rhythms, tropes, tricks and mannerisms are deep within me. But more than that, he taught me something about good nature. It is enough to be benign, to be gentle, to be funny, to be kind.

Childrens books change lives. Stories pour into the hearts of children and help make them what they become.

Clarity in language depends on clarity in thought.

The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.

write what readers want to read, which isn’t necessarily what you want to write.

My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.