All Quotes

Writing for me is not a premeditated act. It just happens - characters keep coming out of nowhere and doing things I never expected them to do. The most persistent and most productive of these has been Paul Christopher, whom I didn't expect to see again after he appeared in 'The Miernik Dossier.'
‐‐ Charles McCarry

Writing for me is quite a plastic form, a kind of mental sculpture, although that sounds weird. It acquires its character and its depth as it goes along.
‐‐ Kate Atkinson

Writing, for me, is very inspiration-dependent. And inspiration can be a jerk.
‐‐ Gene Luen Yang

Writing, for me, was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life.
‐‐ Philip Roth

Writing for Mills and Boon taught me a lot of discipline. You have to produce books in a short time scale and four a year, and it teaches you a lot.
‐‐ Penny Jordan

Writing for myself and writing for another artist are two very different experiences. When I handle both the story and the art, I have full control. I can endlessly tweak every word and every line.
‐‐ Gene Luen Yang

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.
‐‐ Bruno Mars

Writing for 'Rooster' was a strange experience. It's funny, once you tap into a voice, words just start to flow. You know when you've hit a spirit or captured something.
‐‐ Jez Butterworth

Writing for somebody else is really fun 'cause I consider myself a songwriter first and foremost.
‐‐ Kesha

Writing for television is completely different from movie scriptwriting. A movie is all about the director's vision, but television is a writer's medium.
‐‐ Shonda Rhimes

Writing for the page is only one form of writing for the eye. Wherever solemn inscriptions are put up in public places, there is a sense that the site and the occasion demand a form of writing which goes beyond plain informative prose. Each word is so valued that the letters forming it are seen as objects of solemn beauty.
‐‐ James Fenton

Writing for the stage is different from writing for a book. You want to write in a way that an actor has material to work with, writing in the first person not the third person, and pulling out the dramatic elements in a bigger way for a stage presentation.
‐‐ Brian Greene

Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life.
‐‐ Irwin Shaw

Writing for the theatre is so different to writing for anything else. Because what you write is eventually going to be spoken. That's why I think so many really powerful novelists can't write a play - because they don't understand that it's spoken - that it hits the air. They don't get that.
‐‐ Sam Shepard

Writing for theatre is certainly different to writing an essay or any other kind of fiction or prose: it's physical. You're also telling a story, but sometimes the story isn't exactly what you intend; maybe you uncover something you had no idea you were going to uncover.
‐‐ Sam Shepard

Writing for videogames is really unique. You learn all the rules of writing, but there's a whole other set of rules for game writing, and we're changing them as we move along as well, which makes it more challenging.
‐‐ Rhianna Pratchett

Writing for young children I find I often use particular jokes with words and exaggerated, funny events, but some of these haunt the more complex stories for older children too.
‐‐ Margaret Mahy

Writing for yourself is like exposing your diary. It can be a little embarrassing at times, but if it helps somebody get through the day just by hearing a song, it's well worth it.
‐‐ Sevyn Streeter

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
‐‐ Robert Frost

Writing gave me the world.
‐‐ Chuck Palahniuk

Writing generally, it may be said that in design, roof, and general aspect, Japanese Buddhist temples are all alike. The sacred architectural idea expresses itself in nearly the same form always.
‐‐ Isabella Bird

Writing gives me the opportunity to explore ideas, play with language, solve problems, use my imagination, and draw on my own childhood.
‐‐ Jack Prelutsky

Writing good ads is easy when you have something to say.
‐‐ Roy H. Williams

Writing happened to me. I didn't decide to start writing or to be a writer. I never wanted to be a writer.
‐‐ Robert Gottlieb

Writing has always been an interest of mine, and 'The Language of Flowers' combined my experience with foster care with something I've always wanted to do.
‐‐ Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Writing has always been the primary way I make sense of the world.
‐‐ Meghan O'Rourke

Writing has always felt like a compulsion. Even at high school there'd be times when people would ask me if I wanted to go and hang out and I'd sit home and write instead.
‐‐ Amanda Hocking

Writing has always had that tactile quality for me. It's a physical experience.
‐‐ Paul Auster

Writing has always helped me to make sense of difficult things.
‐‐ Joshua Prager

Writing has become my great joy - I simply love it.
‐‐ Dawn French

Writing has become such an outlet for me that when I don't have it, I just get pent up.
‐‐ Emm Gryner

Writing has been as difficult for me as for people who don't like to write and as little fun.
‐‐ Octavia E. Butler

Writing has been so much a part of my life that I'm really quite annoyed that I can't do as much as I used to.
‐‐ Anne McCaffrey

Writing has certain advantages; film is another way to tell a story. An experienced filmmaker will take what she needs from the book and leave out other things. With adaptations, you never get the texture of the writing: it's a different mode.
‐‐ Jhumpa Lahiri

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
‐‐ Truman Capote

Writing has never been a driving force within me.
‐‐ Jeffrey Combs

Writing has never been like therapy for me, but blogging comes a little closer - I can smack-talk freely and frequently, and this is good for me.
‐‐ Kaui Hart Hemmings

Writing has never been that simple for me.
‐‐ Pat Conroy

Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.
‐‐ Rebecca West

Writing has taught me a lot - though far from everything - about writing, so as time has passed, it has become more pleasurable if not easier. I've done other things in life, but writing is by a factor of 10 the most difficult among them. And, of course, you never achieve what you set out to achieve, so you must keep on trying to do better.
‐‐ Charles McCarry

Writing has to be an obsession - it's only for those who say, 'I'm not going to do anything else.'
‐‐ Lorrie Moore

Writing has to support itself.
‐‐ V. S. Naipaul

Writing headlines is a specialty - there are outstanding writers who will tell you they couldn't write a headline to save their lives.
‐‐ Bill Walsh

Writing helps me create a different world that I can escape to.
‐‐ Ashwin Sanghi

Writing helps me process things that are happening to me.
‐‐ Juliana Hatfield

Writing helps me to create order out of chaos and make sense of things. It helps me to understand what I've experienced, what I've felt and seen, so it becomes a little easier to handle. On the other hand, I don't want it to be just a cathartic experience, an outpouring of grief or whatever it is.
‐‐ Miriam Toews

Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history.
‐‐ Edward Rutherfurd

Writing 'Hoop Roots' was a substitute or a surrogate activity. I can't play anymore - my body won't cooperate - so in the writing of the book, I was looking to tell a good story about my life and about basketball, but I was also looking to entertain myself the way that I entertain myself when I play.
‐‐ John Edgar Wideman

Writing humor for me is more like a watchful-ness. You have to watch. When you say something funny, or someone else does, it's more like you wait for the piece.
‐‐ Ian Frazier