Quotes on Writing

Be ruthless about protecting writing days....althoug h writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it.

Really, when I write a book I'm the only one I have to please. That's the beauty of writing a book instead of a screenplay.

Weirdly enough, if I'm having trouble with a guitar part - not the playing of it but the writing - I'll mess around with echo and other effects, just turn everything up and make it as crazy as can be, and it winds up taking me somewhere. I've found so many guitar parts from echo. It's limitless.

I would write my editorials using a manual typewriter in pitch-black darkness... I would produce the whole thing without having seen the text.

I think of myself as a guy who tries to write screenplays and now has tried to direct one. Anything more than that is meaningless and it gets in the way of being a real human being.

Fool," said my muse to me. "Look in thy heart and write.

Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.

Who knows for what we live, and struggle, and die?... Wise men write many books, in words too hard to understand. But this, the purpose of our lives, the end of all our struggle, is beyond all human wisdom.

People spend a lifetime thinking abouthow they would really like to live. I asked my friends and no one seems to know very clearly. To me, it's very clear now. I wish my life could have been like the years when I was writing 'Love in the Time of Cholera.'

I went to the trash pile at Tuskegee Institute and started my laboratory with bottles, old fruit jars and any other thing I found I could use. ... [The early efforts were] worked out almost wholly on top of my flat topped writing desk and with teacups, glasses, bottles and reagents I made myself.

I love revisions...We can't go back and revise our lives, but being allowed to go back and revise what we have written comes closest.

And music has always been incredibly cathartic for me, whether it's writing my own stuff or singing other people's music; it's very freeing.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

Creativity is an act of defiance.

I thought I could capture the stories of the city on paper. I thought I could write about the horrors of the city. Horror stories you see. I tell you I didn't have to look far for material. Everywhere I looked, there were stories hidden there in the dark corners. . . . I wrote and still there were more. . . . No one would publish them. 'Too horrible,' they said. 'Sick mind,' they said. I thought I could write about the horrors of the city but the horror is too big and it goes on forever.

All writing is the same: It's just making up lies until it starts to sound like the truth. That's what I do.

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

Write a lot and hit the streets. A writer who doesn't keep up with what's out there ain't gonna be out there.

Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

The poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning.