Quotes About Writing

Because the more you write the more you're aware of the weight of your tradition and the difficulties of the form and the more you have already done that you do not want to do again.

You are - all your experience just kind of accumulates, and the novel takes a richness of its own simply because it has the weight of all those years that one's put into it.

I'm really happy to have the chance to talk about the editing process. It's something that I think doesn't get the weight it deserves, especially with the rise of self-publishing.

I write line by line, by the sound and the weight and the music of the words.

Doubt is the enemy of mania. It's trying to get aloft strung with weights. The moment I like writing is three sentences in, when somehow those weights drop away, and you can invent. I cannot tell you the dread I have.

Being a showrunner meant writing and producing a television show, period, but with 'Lost,' suddenly it became part of the job to promote and be the face of the brand. In a weird way, the story was as much the star as any of the actors, so people wanted to hear from us.

It was weird - writing is a stupid thing to do. I come up here in the morning to a pleasant room in the roof of my house and imagine I'm a black South American football superstar; then I have to imagine I'm a female pop celebrity who's pregnant. It's a completely mad way to spend your time.

I usually write when I'm in a great place. When I'm depressed, I don't usually write. So I take all of when I'm depressed and throw it into when I'm feeling good. Weird, I guess.

The way I write is that I'll actually have a conversation out loud with myself. In a weird way, I just kind of get schizophrenic and play two characters.

Writing 'The Noonday Demon' turned me into a professional depressive, which is a weird thing to be. A class at the university I attended assigns the book and invited me to be a guest lecturer.

I mean one of the weird things about TV and one of the things that some actors don't like but I kind of dig is that you never know where you're headed, I mean you never know what the writer might think of next.

When I first got sick, they told me I had a year to live, and I was writing my memoir really fast. There were really weird things happening with my nervous system and my heart and stuff, and it didn't look like I was gonna make it, so I was writing really fast, and then I couldn't write anymore.

I write in the weirdest places. I wrote 'Girl on the Coast' in my car with the kids in the back and Eric driving. I just wrote the whole thing on my phone. I just typed out the lyrics.

When I'm writing, it's the weirdest thing: it's not even a conscious process. I'm not even thinking when I write, and then all of a sudden, I'll have a song that makes me feel so much better than I did before.

Bunsen' is one of the best things I've been able to do. I'm so excited about it. Not only because of the awesome characters, but because of the incredible writing our team is doing. I think it combines the best traits of all my previous stuff and even adds a bit of extra weirdness here and there too.

When I write a novel, every word is mine. I welcome suggestions from my editor, but in the end, I make all the final decisions.

When you're a screenwriter working on a film, you're not really even welcome on set, even if you know... When I wrote 'Elizabeth' and Shekhar Kapur was a friend of mine, but I wasn't really welcome on set, because the director is God and it's a very difficult position for a screenwriter who's put so much passion into that, into the writing.

Bringing my two children up while writing was just a part of life. I'd much rather have had their interruptions than been stuck in a sterile office. This way, I had welcome distractions. I had to load the washing machine, I had to go out and buy lemons.

The funny thing about writing is, although you are writing about an experience which only you have had, you are trying to welcome other people into it, and there are ways I think of doing this, and one of them is through the senses, through the sounds and the smells.

For all its ups and downs and challenges, I love writing. We only grow through adversity, so I welcome the difficulties, knowing bumps in the road are my greatest teachers.

When I finish my first draft I usually narrate it to some trusted friends who can give me feedback. All criticism is welcome.

Before I left the 'Star' last year to write books full-time, I welcomed catastrophe. It was material. Missed planes, broken pipes, dead lawns, digestive disorders, you name it, if it was something that had gone horribly wrong, it was worth banging out 600 words about.

I definitely could not write a character that was cruel or unconcerned with animal welfare. For me, not just as a writer but for the person I am, I love animals.

Well, I've always been a character actor, you know, and you always get your share of character actors who are bad guys. So it never surprises me. And if it's good writing, you can find your way into the part well enough.