All Quotes

I try to write 1,000 words a day - about three pages. When I reach 1,000 words I feel good. Less than that: a failure. More than that: tired.
‐‐ Tracy Chevalier

I try to write 1,000 words. Some people say it's not about the quantity but about the quality. I disagree. You need to write a lot in order to figure out what's good and what's crap.
‐‐ Nathaniel Rich

I try to write about a woman finding her self-respect, valuing herself, and liking herself again. But what one desperately wants now is to write a proper novel.
‐‐ Kate O'Mara

I try to write about how we live today, how we use language, technology, our bodies.
‐‐ Dana Spiotta

I try to write about internal experience versus the external self. I like to present ideas, but not package them neatly.
‐‐ Rebecca Stead

I try to write about real women, real people - in other words flawed characters.
‐‐ Emily Giffin

I try to write about the stuff that torments us all.
‐‐ Danielle Steel

I try to write about things, places, events, and phenomena I know about personally. That helps make the novels more genuine.
‐‐ Lincoln Child

I try to write as serious as possible, and then a joke slips in.
‐‐ Jeff Lindsay

I try to write characters that are as real, emotionally and psychologically, as I can make them; I feel the same way about setting. This often means that I'm drawing from my experiences and observations.
‐‐ Lauren Oliver

I try to write conversationally; I try to write like people speak and put the emphasis on the right syllable.
‐‐ Don Henley

I try to write down every song that comes to me, even though I know that every song that comes to me isn't a song that I need to sing.
‐‐ Valerie June

I try to write everyday. I do that much better over here than when I'm teaching. I always rewrite, usually fairly close-on which is to say first draft, then put it aside for 24 hours then more drafts.
‐‐ Marilyn Hacker

I try to write fun - though difficult and challenging - things for actors to do, because I know if they're having fun, they're going to give it everything they got.
‐‐ Tracy Letts

I try to write in plain brown blocks of American speech but occasionally set in an ancient word or a strange word just to startle the reader a little bit and to break up the monotony of the plain American cadence.
‐‐ James Laughlin

I try to write in the mornings, as soon as I'm up and caffeinated, and to stay in the chair as long as I can be productive.
‐‐ Adam Mansbach

I try to write life and not songs. People live life, and when you write life, you're going to mess around and touch somebody's heart, and they'll relate to you and what you're singing about.
‐‐ R. Kelly

I try to write like the writers I admire - I rip them off in form. It comes from George Strait and Merle Haggard records, and country music in general is really good at that, the twisted phrase... So I'm always looking for that angle in my own work.
‐‐ Brad Paisley

I try to write lyrics so that they won't age, which sort of leaves you with the big subjects like death and love and sex and violence.
‐‐ Florence Welch

I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.
‐‐ Nora Ephron

I try to write relevant songs about life and whatever I'm going through and whatever people are going through.
‐‐ Gary Allan

I try to write something that would interest anybody and keep them turning the page. You must have a plot and good storyline.
‐‐ Ernest Gaines

I try to write stories that will attract younger readers and make them feel part of a wider readership. I do not feel able to write books that are about, or even for, teenagers; and I am inclined to be suspicious of books which 'target' them.
‐‐ Mal Peet

I try to write the books I would love to come upon that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness - and that can make me laugh.
‐‐ Anne Lamott

I try to write the kind of books I like to read.
‐‐ Isabel Allende

I try to write three jokes every day. I don't sit down and write them, it's just things that pop into my head. Then I'll go watch it fail onstage that night.
‐‐ Zach Galifianakis

I try to write very fast. I don't revise very much. I write the poem in one sitting. Just let it rip. It's usually over in twenty to forty minutes. I'll go back and tinker with a word or two, change a line for some metrical reason weeks later, but I try to get the whole thing just done.
‐‐ Billy Collins

I try very hard not to take work home, but it can be tricky. Sometimes it feels as if you are wearing your costume underneath your own clothes! I suppose things are always ticking away in the back of your mind.
‐‐ Anne-Marie Duff

I try very hard to handle things equally: ideas, materials, and images.
‐‐ Dan Colen

I try very hard to maintain the confidence of my sources by speaking candidly with them, honoring agreements about the use of our conversation, and practicing journalism in an honest and straightforward way.
‐‐ John Harwood

I try very hard to write the best book I possibly can, every time.
‐‐ Charlaine Harris

I tune everything out.
‐‐ Joshua Ledet

I tune it all out because if I let other people's stress get to me, then I stress myself out more than I need to.
‐‐ Simone Biles

I turn a lot of stuff down - big, big movies, the kind I wouldn't want to go to the cinema to see.
‐‐ Matthew Fox

I turn and turn in my cell like a fly that doesn't know where to die.
‐‐ Antonio Gramsci

I turn aside with a shudder of horror from this lamentable plague of functions which have no derivatives.
‐‐ Charles Hermite

I turn down a lot of movies because sometimes they glamorize violence or the darker side of sex or criminality.
‐‐ David Oyelowo

I turn down invitations to events where I know there will be politicians.
‐‐ Peter Capaldi

I turn into a crying, hysterical maniac when I see a spider. It's pathetic.
‐‐ Kate Dickie

I turn left for a living.
‐‐ Victoria Pendleton

I turn my negatives into my positives because one of my mottos is, 'Yesterday's history, tomorrow's a mystery,' meaning that you can't go back and change anything in the past.
‐‐ Vanilla Ice

I turn on the radio. I'm a really big fan of old-fashioned dial radio. I love WNYC and NPR and also 88.3 in New York, which is the jazz station, and it's usually good for background music. If I'm not in New York City or by a traditional radio, I'll stream it on my phone, although I usually try not to look at my phone first thing in the morning.
‐‐ Julia Stiles

I turn on the TV sometimes, start watching something and think: 'This seems quite good, a bit familiar.' Then I realise... It's one of my movies. It's a pretty odd feeling.
‐‐ Alan Parker

I turn over a lot of money for a lot of people and I'm the smallest fish in it.
‐‐ Michael Hutchence

I turn over a new leaf every day. But the blots show through.
‐‐ Keith Waterhouse

I turn people into human beings by not making them into gods.
‐‐ Imogen Cunningham

I turn to books for a feeling of companionship: for somebody knowing what I have known.
‐‐ Lois Lowry

I turn to my wife for everything. Her success has never affected her as a person - she's incredibly loyal. We laugh together; we share everything, and she still surprises me. When I saw her in 'Sweet Charity,' I was so proud to say, 'That's my wife.'
‐‐ Tom Ellis

I turn to poems to find spaces that might enlarge, rather than distill, experience.
‐‐ Mary Szybist

I turn to someone, I'm not sure, to God I think, but I never ask for anything. I would never pray to win a title; it makes no sense. I've never understood those who pray before a match. I simply give thanks for what I have received.
‐‐ Mario Balotelli