Quotes About Writing

To be a writer you have to be out in the world, you have to risk yourself in the world, you have to be immersed in the world, you have to go out looking for it. This becomes harder as you get older because there's less energy, the days are shorter for older people and it's not so easy to go out and immerse oneself in the world outside.

I was going to say that writing is about disclosure and acting is about obfuscation, but that's such a little lie. Both of them are about obfuscation and masking oneself.

In writing, one searches, and that is what keeps one writing, that one sees and experiences things from another angle entirely; one experiences oneself during the process of writing.

I don't find writing easy. That is because I do take great care: I rewrite a lot. If anything is sort of clumsy and not possible to read aloud to oneself, which I think one should do... it doesn't work.

I think writing is an extension of a childhood habit - the habit of entertaining oneself by taking interesting bits of reality and building upon them.

I've been writing an ongoing letter to my children since they were born, full of recollections of their childhoods. I've filled two journals. It's a great thing to do as a mother - you forget a lot as you go along, but reading over what you've written brings all the memories back.

'The Onion' is an amazing place to work because it's a bunch of really smart, collaborative writers who aren't afraid to try crazy things.

The story and the characters of 'Girl Online' are mine.

The people who are writing online and the people in my genre of creative non-fiction exert a great deal more freedom that journalists are allowed to exert in their day-to-day work.

I think the only difference between me and other people is that when I hear of an interesting historical incident, I immediately write it down and Google it.

The only difference between a good writer who publishes a book and a good writer who doesn't is that the writer who publishes actually finished her book.

Why do I write? I have been called a writer of catastrophes, but that isn't true. I am always looking for words of love. Hate will not save us. Only love.

You can't write anything you want. Once you write that first chapter, then everything else is determined. You can write anything you want, but only one thing works.

I think there is only one way to write fiction - alone, in a room, without interruption or any distraction.

Don't let anyone tell you there's only one way to write.

The only time I was ever approached to write a book was when I was most famous.

I like to work from home. I do most of my writing in bed, late at night after everyone has gone to sleep. I need to be alone with my thoughts, and late at night is about the only time that can actually happen.

It's almost an impossible thing to get a movie made that is written by two actors who want to star in it, when no one knows who they are. The only time it happened that I know of was when Sylvester Stallone did it in 'Rocky.'

I'm always trying out new stuff onstage. That's where I do all my writing.

There is nothing - nothing - like writing a great joke and having that joke kill onstage.

Those emotions that are really strong, the ones that inspire a song, you can hold onto that. You can let it marinate for years and keep writing about it even better than you did then.

I think, in general, as a writer, you can't really hide your values. They're always going to fall out onto the page, and I tend to trust that I don't have to force my ideals into the expression of what's going to happen naturally.

I think with how society makes me feel like I should grasp onto the inner strength of me being a woman, and I felt like it was all just very much married into what I'm listening to, what I'm writing, how I'm feeling.

My instinct is to write under the cloak of an opaque historical setting.