Quotes About Writing

I really like writing television, and I like the collaborative writers room feeling. It's ten people, and you're together every day laughing your heads off.

I really like getting inside the heads of female characters. I think I can do that well, and I enjoy it.

When I write, it's to heal. It's my own self-therapy so that I don't actually feel sad all of the time.

The process of writing a book has given me a whole new reverence for writers. Mechanically, it is a brutal process; emotionally, it's incredibly healing.

When people ask me about my dialogue, I say, 'Don't you hear people talking?' That's all I do. I hear a certain type of individual, I decide this is what he should be, whatever it is, and then I hear him. Well, I don't hear anybody that I can't make talk.

I have never written anything in one draft, not even a grocery list, although I have heard from friends that this is actually possible.

I hear so many writers say - and these are writers that I trust completely - 'I just started hearing a voice', or, 'The characters came to life'. I am filled with loathing for my own characters when I hear that because they do nothing of the sort. Left to their own devices, they do nothing but drink coffee and complain about their lives.

When the script is finished, and you're sitting around at a table read, and all the actors are reading the words that you've written, and you're hearing it out loud for the first time, that is always, every single time, no matter what, a magical process.

Never try to copy other writers, and never try to have a formula. It has to come from your heart and soul.

I write about heartbreak because I like writing about sad things, but I'm writing happy songs, too!

You need to experience life to be able to write about friendships, relationships, and heartbreak.

I'll probably continue to write about heartbreak forever. That stuff doesn't go away as you get older.

I don't start writing a script until I can see it all in my head, then it's a matter of getting it down in white heat.

My idea of heaven is not writing.

Ever since 'Strange Heaven,' I haven't really reread my old work. Not so much because I don't like the writer I was, or because I find flaws in the writing, but more because I get so burnt out on a novel once I've finished writing, revising, editing and copy editing it that I genuinely never want to look at it again after it's gone to press.

Every day I write. I am not waiting for a great idea from heaven.

In this world of doubt, one thing is certain for me; that I will go on writing songs up to and - I hope, through heavenly means or diabolical - beyond the day I die.

When I write in the studio, I tend to gravitate toward the ability to play really loud, aggressive, post-punk stuff, with big, heavy guitars and a big rock drum sound.

I felt that writing about peoples' lives was a heck of a responsibility, and I wanted to know them in a deep way.

When I was writing for children, I was writing genre fiction. It was like making a good chair. It needed four legs of the same length, it had to be the right height and it had to be comfortable.

When I was writing for children, I was writing genre fiction. It was like making a good chair. However beautiful it looked, it needed four legs of the same length, it had to be the right height and it had to be comfortable.

Now that I think about it, maybe my own literary exploration of the dark secrets held by families could be traced back to V.C. Andrews.

I never even held a guitar until I was 23 and living in California, but then loved it. I'm really not an accomplished instrumentalist. Maybe that has something to do with why I write and sing.

I'm quite sure Shakespeare enjoyed writing Iago much more than he did writing Othello. If you write about someone you love, what the hell are you supposed to say about that person? It's much better to have something between you and your main character that grates.