Quotes About Writing

In a moment when criticism shows a singular dearth of direction every man has to be a law unto himself in matters of theatre, writing, and painting. While the American Mercury and the new Ford continue to spread a thin varnish of Ritz over the whole United States there is a certain virtue in being unfashionable.

The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.

You wouldn't be here if you didn't want to write, so let's write. We'll chat later. Get out your pen and paper or fire up the computer. Pour yourself a coffee. Unplug the phone. Once you start, you can't stop. Give yourself a half hour. Relax. Don't think too much. You're starting a journey, and you don't know where you're going. But you do know you're going someplace you haven't been before.

I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.

I needed time to stand back and go through a lot more experience in life. Then I have something to write about, joke or to animate.

My music is a mix of everything, mostly my own life. I just write about things that mean something and that I can write about. There's no point in pretending.

My dream in life is to write the one gag that makes everyone in the world laugh.

I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.

Writing does not exclude the full life; it demands it.

In the life of a real writer, nothing is ever lost, no word you write is a waste of your time or energy.

I don't have traceable literary models because I haven't had great literary influences in my life.

My occupational hazard is that I can't help plagiarizing from real life.

Writing is primarily a sensuous and creative expression of life.

Comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write.

I guess my writing has changed as my life has.

Always being myself and my salve, which is life. I'm not lonely, if that's what it seems like. Always writing things down.

Well, we're all going to die, so mortality is a part of writing and life.

I am writing more than I have ever done. My life has come back to me in the most extraordinary way.

The impulse to write a novel comes from a momentary unified vision of life.

What other people think of me is not really my major concern in life. What other people think of what I write is another matter.

I guess you could say I've been writing all my life.

Indeed, the great paradox of the writer's life is how much time he spends alone trying to connect with other people.

They're not parallel at all. They're my concerns, but how they're expressed particularly on the page is completely divorced from who I am in my street life.

As the writer you are the puppet-master and can control everything. Believe me, that is a whole lot of fun because it ain't something that's going to be happening very often in real life!