Quotes About Writing

You write about experiences partly to understand what they mean, partly not to lose them to time. To oblivion. But there's always the danger of the opposite happening. Losing the memory of the experience itself to the memory of writing about it.

The beautiful thing about writing with the person that you love is that when they come up with an idea that is great, it's this dual happiness because that's the partner and that's such a good idea, and I'm proud of you, and then also I'm really excited for the project.

I'm a filmmaker. I'm always searching for the truth in everything I do. I demand it from my writing partner and my crew, actors, and so hopefully, we're making people think.

I lost that excitement I had when I first started out. It was all about the need to just get a job, and so I found the joy again when I was writing Deuce Bigelow. I was laughing so hard and along with my writing partner at the time, simply laughing until we cried.

That first writing session, what Dan Hill calls a creative blind date, is always a real challenge, and you bring that back to your partner when you return to writing with them.

I think if one wants to be in a continual state of insanity one should stay married to that writing partner.

When you have a writing partner and you're writing a comedy, your goal is to make each other laugh.

I call my tiki bar my tiki office, even though I also entertain out here all the time. This beautiful, open-air space is such a creative environment for me. It's where my writing partner and I wrote much of the script for a Mamas and Papas biopic that's in the works, and where I have my meetings.

My writing partner and I usually write separately, because if we write together we are liable to go a little nuts. The person not at the keyboard can start to feel disenfranchised to the point that they sometimes make a lunge for that accoutrement of computer power, the mouse.

I went to Columbia film school; that's where I met Matthew Weisman. We then became writing partners, graduated, and moved out to Los Angeles. I didn't know a soul.

I would like to think that Ben and myself have begun a partnership that will take us into different areas of music that we can continue to write, enjoy and keep me involved with music other then what I do with RUSH.

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

It's interesting going between small parts and then bigger roles where you carry the film. If the writing is good, and if the people involved have integrity, then you'll do it, even if it's only five minutes on screen.

I want to keep doing different things. I'd like to do a more personal, dramatic movie next, I think. But as long as it's about characters and good writing and good parts for actors, that's what's important.

You know, Mamet is not a huge writer of female parts. Most of his movies don't even have women in them, so I'm lucky I'm in it at all.

I've never tried to pass myself off as anything more than a comedian who wrote a dating book.

When I first started writing, I used to listen to music all the time because it would make time pass more quickly. And then I started to wonder if the music wasn't affecting my writing in ways that I didn't necessarily intend.

I sometimes think I cannot write another passage about a disappointing meal ever again, because I've done it so many times.

Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.

My process is pretty messy, and there's a lot of creative destruction in it. When I set out to write something, I'll write some passages from it just to figure out who these characters are, how they talk. And I have a dim sense of what it's about and where it's going to go, but I know that's going to change, too.

Well, writing for me had always been my first love and what I leaned on as a way to kind of endure difficult passages.

What I wanted to do was to earn enough money to pay for my mother's house. When my mother passed away, I wanted to buy it from the rest of my family and keep the house in the family. That was the only reason I even attempted writing for money.

I have scripts that I've only shown to animals... and they passed on them.

I tend to start books with a very broad outline, but I always leave room for happy accidents. With 'The Passenger,' there were perhaps too many of those.