Quotes About Writing

I'm a writer; I like to retain subtlety and nuance.

A character takes shape in the act of writing. You start with something, and you add or subtract.

Most applicants to creative writing programs submit stories about the angst of their suburban childhoods.

I can remember in my early days of writing going to sort of writers' functions and parties and things like that, and I used to get very irritated because when people heard that you came from the suburbs, they had this notion that it was very un-cool to come from there.

Writing-wise, I started when I was 17. Whatever was bothering me, I could just write about it in a song. I was in the west suburbs of Chicago, then I moved an hour south, and then I went to school up on the South Side - Saint Xavier, though I was at Purdue for a second before I dropped out.

I tell my students that being a writer is like being a member of a medieval guild and that what we are doing is very subversive and very important.

My early novels were written in quite a dark place. I stand by them, but I would never write them again. I think it is subversive to embrace emotional optimism, because it goes against the grain.

The reason people get afraid of writing real, honest journalism and fiction, and the reason corrupted people and demagogues are afraid of journalism and fiction and poetry across the world, is because it is a subversive form.

I bike around New York City for hours and write about everything I love, think about, or see. I also ride back and forth on the subway - that's where I get my best writing done.

To me, obstacles in life build character. You have to be able to overcome adversity in order to succeed and appreciate the simple things life has to offer... that's where most of my inspiration for writing and singing comes from.

I tell myself I write because I want to say something true and original about the nature of evil. That is very ambitious - to say something about the human condition that hasn't been written before. Probably I will never succeed but that is what I strive to do.

Of course there's pressure, and it's still there with every book. Each one is harder to write than the last, basically because you're always trying to write a better book. You won't always succeed, of course, but that has to be what you're shooting for.

I feel as if I've been so inured to failure, because I fail more than I succeed. As with any kind of fiction, I throw out so many pages; I get rejected so many times.

Sadly, some people never get beyond the box stage in their creative life. We all know people who have announced that they've started work on a project-- say, a book-- but some time passes, and when you politely ask how it's going, they tell you that they're still researching. Weeks, months, years pass and they produce nothing. They have tons of research but it's never enough to nudge them toward the actual process of writing the book.

I started writing to deal with my childhood abuse and to help me get over it. I began putting my thoughts on paper because I saw a show on Oprah where she said it was "cathartic" to write things down. Being from a substandard public school system, I didn't even know what "cathartic" meant. I had to look it up. So I started writing, but I didn't

even realize I was writing a play. I just used different characters' names so that if someone found my pages, they wouldn't know I was writing about myself. But eventually I let a close and trusted friend read what I'd written, and he said, "Man, this is a really good play.

A good first step to getting to this peaceful place is to write down your hurt. Let it all out. All of it. Once you're through writing it down, ask God for help. You want the path to forgiveness to be cleared. You want to let go of the mind loop of blame. You want to let go of the fire of anger. You want to stop tasting the bitterness of betrayal and hurt. Once your path is cleared…the sky is the limit.

Journalism is the first rough draft of history.

A novel is a piece of prose of a certain length with something wrong with it.

A short pencil is better than a long memory.

There is no point in having the idea for a wonderful novel if you have never learned to read and write.

I never want to forget that if Lewis Carroll had asked me whether or not he should bother writing about a little girl named Alice who fell asleep and dreamed that she had a lot of adventures down a rabbit hole, it would not have sounded awfully tempting to any editor.

Shake was a dramatist of note; He lived by writing things to quote...