All Quotes

I write the music because I can't really write lyrics. But I can write chords like Robin's never heard of. So I provide the music for them to add the lyrics to.
‐‐ Maurice Gibb

I write the music, produce it and the band plays within the parameters that I set.
‐‐ Sting

I write the occasional entry for the 'Times' Theatre blog, especially when I'm in London and seeing two shows a day, but I don't tweet. I don't want to have to express my opinion in 140 characters. That's like writing haiku. You need a certain amount of legroom to review a play properly.
‐‐ Ben Brantley

I write the paragraph, then I'm crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometimes it's almost illegible, and if I wait, I might not be able to read it the next day.
‐‐ Paul Auster

I write the poems first, with only a few exceptions for odd reasons, where I'm given the illustration first.
‐‐ Jack Prelutsky

I write the shopping column. I think I've proven my superficiality.
‐‐ Patricia Marx

I write the songs and hand it over to the world and see what happens. But the things that I've written for people that have been hits, I don't know that I would have directed them in the right path, but they definitely wound up on the right path.
‐‐ Chris Stapleton

I write the songs, go in and record them, then I listen to everything and decide how it all fits together.
‐‐ Lucinda Williams

I write the story as it comes to me - YA is my natural voice, not a conscious choice.
‐‐ Marie Lu

I write the story that nobody reads. Someday, I'm going to write it in German to see if anyone notices.
‐‐ Rick Reilly

I write the vocals last, because I wanted to invent the music first and push the music to the level that I had to compete against it.
‐‐ Axl Rose

I write the way I write.
‐‐ Robert Kirkman

I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works, but each one launches another. Every constraint, even dullness, frees up a new design.
‐‐ Richard Powers

I write these shows one joke at a time. There's no continuity. I do try to figure an order to the stories, but there's not continuity.
‐‐ Ron White

I write things in my house, and hopefully there's a reader out there who enjoys it and has an experience with it, but that's very different than a performer on stage, where there's an immediate dance with the audience. It's incredibly powerful.
‐‐ Stacey D'Erasmo

I write. This is what I do. My job is to sit down with my vocabulary, select words, and decide what order they should be placed in an attempt to keep someone's attention and perhaps provide them with a laugh or two along the way.
‐‐ Alan Zweibel

I write - though perhaps it sounds pretentious to say so - to make a clearing in the wilderness, to find out what I care about and what exactly to make of it.
‐‐ Pico Iyer

I write to be truthful in my songs, which is why I wrote what's painfully truthful about my life in my autobiography.
‐‐ Rick Springfield

I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.
‐‐ Daniel J. Boorstin

I write to escape; to escape poverty.
‐‐ Edgar Rice Burroughs

I write to explore something that fascinates me, and I write the way I do because it is the only way I know how to write.
‐‐ Cathy Marie Buchanan

I write to express my thoughts, my feelings. I want people to think.
‐‐ Mattie Stepanek

I write to feel alone.
‐‐ Jhumpa Lahiri

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.
‐‐ Michel de Montaigne

I write to make sense of things that don't make sense to me.
‐‐ Daphne Gottlieb

I write to music, and Nina Simone is always on my playlist to write to. I mean, she's inspiring. She's truthful and real and raw.
‐‐ Gina Prince-Bythewood

I write to satisfy the story or poem or piece of fascinating research that speaks to me. To rub a sore, to resonate with joy, to answer a question no one else has satisfactorily answered for me.
‐‐ Jane Yolen

I write to tell my grandchildren where they come from, and what their grandparents were up to, and I hope they will in their own way continue. I invite anyone else to listen in.
‐‐ Arthur Hertzberg

I write to try to find out who I am. One of my main themes is manliness. I think I'm trying to figure out what manliness really is.
‐‐ Ernest Gaines

I write to understand as much as to be understood.
‐‐ Elie Wiesel

I write to understand my circumstances, to sort out the confusion of reality, to exorcise my demons. But most of all, I write because I love it!
‐‐ Isabel Allende

I write totally spontaneously. I actually write fiction by hand - that always seems to startle people. I think the reason I do that is to bypass the thinking part of me and get to the more unconscious part, which is where all the good ideas seem to be.
‐‐ Jennifer Egan

I write traditional drama, and the small enclosed communities work well with this form. I enjoy exploring secrets. On small islands, privacy is important, and there are secrets that everyone can guess but nobody talks about.
‐‐ Ann Cleeves

I write until the first draft is finished, and then I feel that I can get out. But, during the time of the writing of the first draft, I don't go out. I'm just locked away, writing. It's a time of meditation, of going into the story.
‐‐ Isabel Allende

I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft. I can write more quickly than I can read.
‐‐ John Irving

I write very slowly.
‐‐ Carla Bley

I write very, very slowly, and for me, I have to summon all sorts of resources to make one of these pieces work.
‐‐ Junot Diaz

I write what I call 'novels of consolation' for people who are bright and sophisticated.
‐‐ Alan Furst

I write what I'd like to read and just hope that, along the way, others might like to read them, too.
‐‐ Kate Morton

I write what I don't know. It's way more interesting.
‐‐ Patrick Rothfuss

I write what I like to read, and I enjoy love triangles in YA and adult fiction - not to mention in other media like TV, opera, theatre, and even in video games! I relish when dark and compelling characters compete for our protagonist's heart. The doubts, the uncertainty - the jealousy! - can be breathtaking.
‐‐ Kresley Cole

I write what I'm interested in.
‐‐ Lisa See

I write what I see; I paint what I am.
‐‐ Etel Adnan

I write what I think is funny and I write from a sense of popping a balloon or a sense of injustice, whether it's about yourself, or whether it's about something else. It's my worldview; it doesn't mean that everybody has to agree with it.
‐‐ Denis Leary

I write what I want to write, and then, when it's finished, I use my judgment to see whether or not I think it's intrusive. If it is problematic, then I ask those involved. I won't necessarily do what they say. But I do consult. I haven't had too many problems. Nobody's really gotten angry at me. Nobody, as far as I know, has felt betrayed.
‐‐ John Edgar Wideman

I write what I write.
‐‐ Umberto Eco

I write what's given me to write.
‐‐ Philip Levine

I write when I have to; I write when the song is done and I deal with the idea and I just go with it and I'll become what that song is all about until I have finished it. And when you do that, it makes the song more visual, it makes it more personal.
‐‐ Kerry King

I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.
‐‐ Peter De Vries