Quotes About Writing

It wasn't until I started to read short stories - by people like Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, John Updike... Eudora Welty - that I became excited about the possibilities of writing.

The minute you start putting words on paper you're eliminating possibilities.

Writing is not for me. I completely lose my sense of humor when I write. I become extremely pathetic, very sensational. Images give me possibilities that I don't have with words.

I don't think about what I can't do or what I shouldn't be doing. I just think there are endless possibilities musically, really. And I'm very, very open to experimenting with different people and trying to find different methods of writing and making music.

I think as the world changes, we have to keep up. We have to note what is happening, and I think writing has always had a powerful corrective influence and possibility. We have to write about what's good, and we also have to write about parts of our culture that are not good, that are not working out. I think it takes a new eye.

The writing of 'Topdog' was a great gift. I feel the play came to me because I realized that my circumstances, while causing me despair and heartbreak, also held great possibility, if only I could see it.

I may well do some more polemical writing, if a subject that fires me up comes along. Apart from that possibility, I would like to continue to tell stories so long as I have stories to tell.

The only process that comes close to the process of writing a whole book, in my experience, is childbirth. There is this moment when you think you can't possibly labour for another moment, and that, paradoxically, is when you have to push hardest.

I don't think that writing talent has much to do with where one went to school, or the number of degrees on one's business card, but I do get a bit bristly at the implication that romance authors couldn't possibly be smart enough to get into an Ivy League school.

I try very hard to write the best book I possibly can, every time.

I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions that you can possibly delve into.

I wanted to write as well as I possibly could to deal with life-and-death problems in contemporary society. And the form of Wilkie Collins and Graham Greene, of Hammett and Chandler, seemed to offer me all the rope I would ever need.

In a memoir, I think, the contract implies a certain degree of truth. I think you have to be as true to your memory and your experience as you possibly can.

One thing I like about trying to write is that I can possibly write myself a role. Otherwise, you're at the mercy of whatever roles are out there that people are willing to give to you.

Novel-writing is a bit like deception. You lie as little as you possibly can. That's the way I do it, anyway.

My intention still is to write a play to commemorate, possibly rather skeptically, the 50th anniversary of the Russian revolution. I started it at the beginning of 1966, but confronted with the enormous importance and reality of that revolution, I absolutely boggle. I don't know what to do about it.

Writing is possibly an art, but crime writing is definitely a craft.

I thought at 46 years old, I've been removed from the fashion industry for 10 years. I couldn't possibly write a model's book. That's for a 20-year-old. But I could say what I want to say without chastising the industry.

I felt that politics was one place where I could possibly have a career in arguing, debating, and getting to write papers. I almost considered working in law enforcement or something like that, but that didn't really last long.

If you write a blog post, you've got something to say; you're not just creating words and synonyms. We'd like the computers to actually pick up on that semantic meaning.

I came from a poor family in Coney Island. I learned to write by reading the 'Post.' This was my education.

Now I have to have the biggest P.O. box in the entire post office to get all the manuscripts coming in.

When I'm writing a novel, one of the things I do is get big poster boards. They're actually canvases that artists use. And I keep all the characters' names on them. If you write a big novel, there's a lot of characters.

I'm not going to write for posterity. I'm going to write to make a buck.