Quotes About Writing

It sounds funny, but I always try to keep an open mind about what I'm writing about. Sometimes I squeak my opinions in there, but generally I don't. I try to be objective about things that I'm writing about.

In 1998, Vanity Fair asked me to write a big piece for them on the 50th anniversary of the New York City Ballet. My life, to a great extent, had been spent at and with the New York City Ballet, and I decided to try it. It was very scary, writing about something I loved so much and had such strong opinions about.

It takes people being alone in front of the computer at three in the morning to write opinions about movies, apparently.

I think one of the main reasons I write is to do better than ranting. The ranting is the opinion, and the writing is not the opinion. I always say that people's opinions are the worst things about them. The words demand a dignity.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

In television writing, you want to hear what the characters say as opposed to giving them something to say. It's the same with the cartoons.

You just go straight for the reality of the situation. So when I sit down to write, I find myself judging it as I'm doing it, as opposed to letting it free flow.

France was very opposite of the show-business experience I'd been living; I was anonymous and alone. I wore no makeup, wore the same clothes every day. And I wrote and wrote and wrote.

When people give you a writing assignment, they're asking what you think. That's the very opposite of being an actor. When you're an actor, no one wants to hear what you think.

If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.

I like to write, and I try to be positive and optimistic.

For me, the optimum circumstances for writing a book are those of stultifying routine.

I always knew I wanted to be a musician, and I always knew I wanted to write, 'cause the people I was listening to all wrote. I never thought it was an option to sing anyone else's songs.

I was an only child who was never really good at anything else. I had no other option. I could write; I wanted to write; I wrote. Otherwise, I was unemployable.

I remember all the writers I started with who I was embarrassed to be around - they were so much better than me. A lot of them are no longer writing. I guess they were better rounded and had other options. Due to social discomfort, I only had the one road.

I know I'm not a great writer. I'm an extremely gifted oral communicator, but when it comes to writing, I'm just a beginner.

I think I was 16 when I had the thought of maybe being a writer. And this is complicated, something I only now understand, because when I was young, having dyslexia and not knowing it made reading such an ordeal.

At the end of 1795 and beginning of 1796, I was ordered to write to the Church ministers.

I feel like communication is the same whether you're cooking for someone or singing or writing a song or writing a play or ordering from McDonald's.

I'm actually rather orderly, although the way that I write is not.

I try very hard to write in a very orderly and continual disciplined manner.

The idea of writing, to me, was, from the beginning, was writing something which was a little different from the ordinary exchange of speech. It was something that had a certain formality, something in which the words were of interest in themselves.

I honestly thought I probably did sell 100 million books. That doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me.

Authors are ordinary people who usually start to live apart, in the imagination, because they don't fit in with normal, healthy people.