Quotes About Writing

I try to write characters that are as real, emotionally and psychologically, as I can make them; I feel the same way about setting. This often means that I'm drawing from my experiences and observations.

Til 1983, I wrote primarily for other psychologists and expected that they would be the principal audience for my book.

I'm not very good at depicting the characters' psychology on the page.

If I wasn't an actor, I would probably be writing or doing something with psychology.

I was just fascinated with the brain and the mind, and I found psychology engaging for writing about people, and that fed into my interest in cinema.

Gasman' was something I wrote on a beer mat in a pub.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least.

Being in the public eye is easy for me because I come from a family of four generations of teachers, so I'm used to being around books and discussions. But to write, I very much need to be alone.

When I first began to write, I was writing on bass, because I was thinking more Public Image, more dub.

I like to think that I'm one of the few people in public life who write their own material. I write every word. And I really enjoy writing - especially my political commentary.

That's the thing about a book: You're in the public life for a little bit, and then you sort of go away for a little while - several years, in my case - and then you come out again, hopefully.

The reason I wrote political satire was because I thought it - politics - was important... that public policy was important. Then I transitioned into books, then into radio.

Within the small crew of people who hold the media's many 'NeverTrump' positions, the Ethics and Public Policy Center's Pete Wehner doesn't get enough credit for writing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again.

If, in the schools, the classical language would no longer be taught, whom could we entrust with the writing of memorials, documents, letters and notes in the public service? How could we possibly assign important offices and heavy responsibilities to someone who cannot even write fluently?

When you write a book for publication, you're writing it for other people to read.

I write everything in Courier 12 because I write for publication, not pleasure.

The key to understanding my career is that I was never into technology. From the beginning, I brought an outsider's point of view, which is why I write for a layman's publication.

I'd been writing poems for many years, but most of them I didn't like. Then, when I was 23, I wrote one I did like, sent it to 'The Paris Review' - the highest publication I could think of - and they accepted it. No other moment in my literary life has quite come close to that.

I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them - without a thought about publication - and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.

Five people read my work before its ready for publication, and I solicit opinions from all of them: my wife, my agent, my editor, and my parents.

What I feel is there are certain demands that you have to satisfy in any piece of writing. When it's just for me, it's just for me, but if it's a piece for a particular publication, I know what they're going to ask for.

Before I went into parliament I used to write business publications, and like many authors wrote under a business name.

I write relationship columns for a couple of publications.

I spent a whole 12 years helping other people tell their stories as a publicist, so just to be able to go and write and get behind the camera, that's my thing.