Quotes About Writing

Initially, I wanted to write middle grade. YA scared me: there's a lot of responsibility in being a YA author. It's so important to give that age range the right books that reflect their world and show them themselves.

Honesty and truth in writing is so important, and I think that YA writing above all is honest, and I think that appeals to anyone of any age.

I wanted to live the life my characters were living, so I rented a yacht and sailed from Naples to Capri before taking a helicopter back. Got to write the whole thing off as research on my taxes.

I studied literature and Italian at Yale. I wrote my thesis about Italo Svevo, one of my heroes.

I've had students at Yale: my main task with them in drama school was not helping them with their writing but showing them how valuable they were. Because they're ready to give it up and go into teaching or television.

So I decided to start writing plays, and went to Yale.

I wanted to write plays. I was at Yale graduate school at the time for English literature, not for acting... I liked the idea of collaboration, and I thought if I'm gonna write plays, I should learn something about speaking the lines that I might try to write.

I wrote fiction during my entire childhood, from age 4 to 18, and started writing plays when I went to Yale and Oxford.

I was fortunate that Yale has a very open and creative law school. I took many courses outside the law school, and every semester, the students had a literature reading group. I was asked to lead one on 'Dante and the Concept of Justice,' and it was around that time that I began writing the novel.

As an undergrad, I was the editor of the Yale humor magazine, and since then, I've published humor in the 'New York Times' and 'Atlantic,' among other places.

I love Yamaha Clavinovas. I have them at home, in the studio and on tour with me. I find them ideal for all sorts of things: silent practice with headphones at home; writing; arranging and... just playing the blues!

When Basquiat was hanging out with Madonna and Fab Five Freddy, and all those worlds were colliding, people have to realize hip-hop and the arts were like this 'cause we both were outcasts: we wasn't allowed inside the galleries or inside Yankee Stadium. We were writing in the street and making music.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

I sit in my room at my desk, looking out the window to the yard and waiting for a plot to come to me, to rise slowly in my mind.

I wander around the house and write in bed, at the kitchen table, by the window, in the yard.

Like most writers, I read constantly. I used to hide in remote parts of the yard and house so I could read in peace.

I write longhand; I make changes longhand, and I have an assistant who types it up. She lives 70 yards away. Every afternoon, I have a case I leave out on the porch, and she brings it back the next morning.

I can tell from about 20 yards away when someone has a manuscript for me. I can just tell - they have that look.

Writing works when publications are writing and serving the best interest of their users; numbers are good yardstick but not a way to compensate a person.

A good column is one that sells paper. It doesn't matter how beautifully it is written and how much you admire the author... if it doesn't sell any papers, it's not a good column. It's a terrible yardstick to use, but in the newspaper business, that's the whole thing.

The first thing that attracts me to any script is the writing. If I find myself becoming lost in a good yarn, then I feel certain that others will, too.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

There was a time before I felt I was a real writer, when I was a yarn spinner and I just wanted to tell story until it was over. But then there came a time where I was like, 'No, I want to understand something through writing this that I might have not understood before. I want people to come away with something to think about.'

Yeah, with 'NASARATI,' that was my first project. I really worked literally three days on it, writing on the beats and putting it together. I'm not saying that I don't love the mixtape, but it was really my first, first move in rap. I tried to make sure everything sound different, so you hear no two songs and think they sound alike.