Quotes About Writing

A lot of young girls don't realise how diverse the career opportunities are in games development. Many think that you need elite math skills and a vast knowledge of all things tech to work in games, and haven't thought about avenues like design, producing, art, writing or composing.

I've had so many young girls come up to me after a show and say, 'How do I start putting my music on Bandcamp?' or 'I used to play music, but I don't anymore, and I really want to start writing again.' That's just the most amazing feeling.

I've been in the songwriting circuit as well. I've been in a couple writing camps where there are seven top writers or whatever, and they're writing songs for a young girl or a young guy that are coming up, and they're kind of nuts.

My brother is the lifelong musician; he made the choice to do that when we were very, very young kids. I remember him playing in bands and listening to the music he was writing in the house - he's nine years older than me.

I write books for all age groups - young kids, teenagers and adults - because I get a range of different ideas.

I don't think I can ever write about young kids anymore. I completely shot my wad there.

I had never thought about writing a novel. But I had two young kids, and I realized that if I could write a novel, I could work at home.

Luckily I haven't fallen into the trap, which has claimed so many writers, of living from day to day thinking 'Ah, I'll write a book about that.'

The biggest trap that all performers and writers find is that when something really crazy, really bad happens, your mind immediately goes to, 'Can I write about this?' - which is good and bad.

There's a beautiful, kind of seductive trap in being autobiographical in our writing of songs: We just get stuck in our own syrup, and it's so personal that it almost can be embarrassing to the listener.

The characters are not allowed to change if you write a sitcom; they're not allowed to learn anything. There's all these sorts of rules, and you go, 'I just want to be able to write one character and then leave that behind.' Also, as a performer, and I may regret saying this, but it would be my own personal hell to be trapped in the sitcom.

The reason I write is because I have questions. What I don't want is for people to forget that I'm a novelist and think I'm a sociologist or something. I don't want to feel trapped into a corner where I don't belong.

Paper and ink are all but trash, if I cannot find the thought which the writer did think.

You can call someone a lousy writer. You can say you hate their book. You can even call a person 'white trash' but you can't go on television and slander a person's career. It's illegal, even on reality shows.

My life is, in a sense, trash. My life is only that of which the residue is my writing.

As a children's author, reviewers are generally very nice to you. I only ever wrote one adult book and received such a kicking for it that I was in trauma for the next six months.

Let women write horror. Let women write darkness, let women write trauma, without having to carve out their own trauma to justify it.

Katrina silenced me for two years. I wrote a 12-page essay on my experience in Katrina, and that's it. I didn't write anything for, like, two, two and a half years after Katrina hit because it was so traumatic.

Writing about traumatic events in your life is actually much harder than being there the first time round because you have to relive all those moments and you know what the outcome is.

Once you're in a room like '30 Rock,' it's a creative setting, so you write more even after you go home, just because you're still in that mode of coming up with jokes. So the job wasn't sapping standup jokes, but it was sapping stand up time and energy, and I wouldn't be able to travel as much.

You become a better writer by writing. You become a better travel writer by writing about travel.

The desire to become a journalist came really because I very much like living abroad, and like to travel, and wanted to be paid for it.

My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection.

The fact that people will pay you to talk to people and travel to interesting places and write about what intrigues you, I am just amazed by that.