Quotes About Writing

When I'm writing Broadway, it's for a character, a man, a woman, an old guy, a kid. In the band, you're talking in your own voice in the lyrics, saying what you think or feel. On Broadway, you're expressing that through a character.

I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn't something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing - it's just an expression of me.

What is writing but an expression of my own life?

Write what you feel. Write because of that need for expression.

I could never really decide what I wanted to be when I grew up, and for a while, I thought that maybe I wanted to be a writer... I've always loved to write, that form of expression.

The computer is limited in expression. It can't do what the human player can do. What's dangerous is that you fall for writing for the computer and what sounds good on it instead of writing something that actually sounds good when a player performs it. It's dangerous when you go down that road.

Shakespeare is the best writing ever. It's incredibly rich, dense, expressive language.

When you're writing about cops from the perspective of cops, that level of sarcasm about their job and how they treat people will color the writing to a certain extent.

When you write a show, every character is you to some extent.

As far as the creative side, the more I do this, the more I know that it's all about the writing. We don't always celebrate that enough, but without the writing, you can't do much. You got on a film sometimes, and it's sort of half-written, and they expect and think that the actor's job is to bring the extra part and the good part. It's not.

I have this dream again and again: I find extra rooms in the place where I live. You could say it's a very New York dream, but I think it's about writing - the feeling that there is something behind a wall or a door.

For several decades, I believed it was necessary to be extraordinary if you wanted to write, and since I wasn't, I gave up my ambition and settled down to a life of reading.

With comedic actors, you can write one joke or two jokes, sample dialogue, and they have the capacity to extrapolate.

When you write on your own, you can write the extremes. No one else is watching and you can really go as far as you need to.

I wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break.

I've written a book; I've become a better husband and father because I'm home every day. My connection to the Hollywood world has only been through Facebook.

When I'm writing stuff, I need to watch the scene in my head, like a little movie, or else it just feels stupid. It just feels very written. There are things that actors do and faces they make and pauses they take and their rhythms. You need that.

I think all characters are facets of the writer. In a way, they have to be if you're going to write them convincingly.

There's one massive problem with coming from writing novels into screenplays that I've discovered over the years, which is that you've got too much facility on the page.

I don't want to be a writer where all the characters sound the same. There's a facility in that kind of writing.

Too many writers get into that gross-'em-out factor.

Writing went from being a calling to being a job. Business ruined things. It became like making sausages in a sausage factory.

I wouldn't want to write a biography of anyone. I'd feel too inhibited by the facts and too much pressure to do the subject's life justice.

When I was younger, I just put off the writing until later in the day, but now I write early every morning to get it done. I can only write for a few hours at a time; after that, my attention fades.