Writing Quotations | Page 7

As a performer, you can't just sit around waiting for the phone to ring. You have to write and develop projects for yourself, because casting people aren't always going to see you the way you want to be seen. Write a one-person show, shoot a short film, do plays, whatever - activity breeds activity. No one's interested in a stay-at-home actress.

You don't write a book to show off.

I have devoted my energies to the study of the scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church; study, teaching, and writing have always been my delight.

How long it takes to write a book depends on its length.

To tell the truth, I don't read children's books. I'm an adult. I just write them.

You can write a great book and be ignored. Literary history is full of classics that were under-appreciated in their own time.

I write in English. My first album came out in Italy, and I toured and did gigs.

I feel like my songs are like diary entries for me. So I usually write about things that have happened to me specifically or sometimes it can be someone who's close to me.

When I write software, I know that it will fail, either due to my own mistake, or due to some other cause.

When Edward Gibbon was writing about the fall of the Roman Empire in the late 18th century, he could argue that transportation hadn't changed since ancient times. An imperial messenger on the Roman roads could get from Rome to London even faster in A.D. 100 than in 1750. But by 1850, and even more obviously today, all of that has changed.

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber.

I do like the research part of writing, I must admit.

Writing is part intuition and part trial and error, but mostly it's very hard work.

I published only in academic journals in philosophy until I was in my 40s, but I had been writing fiction and poetry my whole adult life - without ever once trying to publish it, and rarely letting anyone read it.

I write and sing about whatever I am able to understand and feel.

It makes me feel wonderful that people still care for me... that I have so many fans among young people, who write to me and tell me I have been an inspiration.

When I was writing the Destiny's Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn't know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.

When they write about real stuff like my custody battle, that's no fun. Some things have leaked out about accusations that have gone back and forth and that's just mean. It's a tactic.

Night-time is when I brainstorm; last thing, when the family's asleep and I'm alone, I think about the next day's writing and plan a strategy for my assault on the blank page.

Im a writer, so whatever gymnastics jump through my head, I write about it.

As long as mixed grills and combination salads are popular, anthologies will undoubtedly continue in favor.

I start with something that makes me angry or confused, and then I write about it. It's a form of self-help.

I would love to see more women directors because they represent half of the population - and gave birth to the whole world. Without them writing and being directors, the rest of us are not going to know the whole story.

I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.

Now I'm trying to work outside first person. I do plan to write more books.

As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings.

Writing is so wrapped up in ego, but with math one is just trying to get it right, although you're often wrong. I think math helped me become a good critic of myself, come at writing a little less personally.

I write box notes for Kino International, which specializes in distributing foreign films.

The problem is when you are writing something in retrospective, it needs a lot of courage not to change, or you will forget a certain reality, and you will just take in consideration your view today.

The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.

I'm never sure who I'm writing for, or who's reading me, but I definitely see myself in conspiracy with my readers.

I write and write and write, and then I edit it down to the parts that I think are amusing, or that help the storyline, or I'll write a notebook full of ideas of anecdotes or story points, and then I'll try and arrange them in a way that they would tell a semi-cohesive story.

Everything that I write will be signed with my name.

I write from the same place I parent, and since becoming a single parent, I have found it difficult, if not impossible, to write anything of length.

I write music just for me. I'm certainly not good enough to do it on any kind of a level but I enjoy that time because it's quiet.

I thought writing about somebody current would be a little closer to what I'm used to doing.

From a building right in front of my windows, I can observe the speed of the sunrises and sunsets. The voices of children playing, laughing, yelling, and crying on the playground crawl up to the eighth floor, where I write. Their voices sound so innocent from a distance.

Seem to be telling this, but really telling that. Three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of that. You could learn something from Nabokov on every page he ever wrote.

The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do, aided by modern technology, which enables me, having long since moved beyond longhand, to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes.

The storyboard artists job is to plan out shot for shot the whole show, write all the dialog, and decide the mood, action, jokes, pacing, etc of every scene.

I've been writing since I was very young, even before I was a teenager. As far as I'm concerned, I am a writer - whether my writing's spoken or written in a blog, paper, book or printed on the side of a submarine.

My writing improved the more I wrote - and the more I read good writing, from Shakespeare on down.

I have terrible handwriting. I now say it's a learning disability... but a nun who was a very troubled woman hit me over the fingers with a ruler because my writing was so bad.

The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that's saying a lot.

Ever since I could first write I have been doing so. When I was taught how to write and read at school, I made up my mind that this was what I love to do best and this was the world I was going to occupy.

That's what writing is all about, after all, making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there.

Actors are good liars; writers are good liars with good memories.

For the last few years I've tried to force myself to write at least one page every day, which doesn't sound like much but it's actually pretty hard to manage. Because I'm not allowed to do a make-up day. I can't do two pages the next day. The punishment for not completing my page is that I have to eat a vegetarian meal the next day.

Writing is hard work. Generating stories that catch people's attention and holding it are very difficult.

Once I have the story in my head, I write it down. The illustrations usually come last.

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

I suppose directing on set is the most fun because it's a good crack and you feel you're on the battlefield whereas writing is a fairly solitary undertaking.

Write your goals down in detail and read your list of goals every day. Some goals may entail a list of shorter goals. Losing a lot of weight, for example, should include mini-goals, such as 10-pound milestones. This will keep your subconscious mind focused on what you want step by step.

No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.

Me writing about tennis is like a baker baking bread.

In our office, we have a whiteboard with all of our ideas and things we want to write on it - great ideas we have that we haven't had the time to get around to yet.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.

Who knows whether in retirement I shall be tempted to the last infirmity of mundane minds, which is to write a book.

Name the book that made the biggest impression on you. I bet you read it before you hit puberty. In the time I've got left, I intend to write artistic books - for kids - because they're still open to new ideas.

Without a function, we cease to be. So, I will write till I die.

I am really impressed by lawyers who write books and tell us that they never lost a case. Most lawyers who have never lost a case have not had enough hard cases. But there are very difficult cases out there.

What's so crazy is when you give interviews to reporters that don't really care too much for you, basically what they're going to do is write what they want to write and discredit you. They're going to write and say what they want to say, no matter what you tell them.

I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.

The best thing that ever happened to me is that nothing happened in writing. I ended up working for engineering companies, and that's where I found my material, in the everyday struggle between capitalism and grace. Being broke and tired, you don't come home your best self.

I'd have to say that my favorite thing is writing a song that really says how I feel, what I believe - and it even explains the world to myself better than I knew it.

God is love, but get it in writing.

When you write a two thousand page history of the Second World War, the deportations and the concentration camps will take up five pages, and the gas chambers perhaps 20 lines.

I write because I admire the act of rationalization, of seeking clarity in one's understanding of the complexities of life, and I'm bad at it. I'm slow. Writing, which is an arduous and slow process, proceeds at the same rate as my sloth-like mind.

There is a quite a lot of effort involved but I find action sequences some of the quickest to write and the most fun.

There arent any rules, as far as anything-and that applies especially to writing songs, whatever gets the point across. So youre just kind of brought up to feel-in any field, if you say you can do it, do it. There it is.

I write scripts in storyboard fashion using stick figures, and thought balloons and word balloons and captions. Then I'll write descriptions of what scenes should look like and turn it over to the artist

I have so much music inside me I'm just trying to stay afloat. I don't tend to write for a particular band - you have to just write the songs and then let God into the room and let the music tell you what to do.

My father I liked, but it was only after his death that I got to know him by writing the play.

My writing is inspired by just about everything, yet I am unaware of so much of the process.

I think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information.

I see creative-writing classes as some sort of AA meeting. It is more of a support group for people who write than an actual course in which you learn writing skills. This support group is extremely important because there is something very lonely about writing.

I love to write, to sing, to make music. Not to act: I am horrible.

I always write lyrics first and the rhythm and the melody come from the lyrics. It always comes from the lyrics: words have rhythm and words have melody.

I'm really annoyed by the wave of country music that's just a list of stuff. It almost sounds like L.A. people writing country music, because it's just a list of stuff: 'My pickup truck and my cowboy boots and my Levi's jeans and my girlfriend with the short shorts.' It's so boring!

The act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation, but I never really concerned myself with that. I write because it interests me.

Writing is like a rollercoaster ride for me, an adventure. I love exploring the world through playing people who are absolutely nothing like me.

I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

The career of a writer is comparable to that of a woman of easy virtue. You write first for pleasure, later for the pleasure of others and finally for money.

I have all these revelations as I'm writing. Each song is like a chapter of my diary.

One of the things I enjoy most about writing historical romance is researching inspiring backgrounds and settings.

I want to write such things as compel the admiring acclamation of the world at large, such things as are written but once in years, things subtle but distinctly different from the books written every day.

I'm very finicky about when I'm in the right mood to write. So most days, I find some excuse not to do anything.

I think the job of writing and literature is to encourage each one of us to believe that we're living in a story.

I started writing while I was a little boy. Maybe it's because I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday. Also, my love for good writing pushed me.

I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose.

I would teach from nine to four, sleep an hour, and write from six until midnight, night after night.

Good education means learning to read, write and most importantly learn how to learn so that you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up.

Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.

I have to write what I can write, and writing the text of a picture book is like walking a tightrope, if you ramble off... As my friend Julius Lester says, A picture book is the essence of an experience.

To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons.

When you feel sad, it's okay. It's not the end of the world. Everyone has those days when you doubt yourself, and when you feel like everything you do sucks, but then there's those days when you feel like Superman. It's just the balance of the world. I just write to feel better.

I write first for myself as a therapeutic process, to get stuff out and to deal with it.

To me, writing is much freer than dancing. With writing, you could do it whenever you wanted. You didnt have to do little exercises and stay in shape. You could have great moments of inspiration that advanced the story. In dance, unless youre going to choreograph things yourself, youre at the service of someone else.