Quotes About Writing

I write songs with melodies, which have sold for decades.

Generally, all my life, I have had strong friction with life - I was a problematic soldier, I was kicked out of the army, I was in fights. There was something about writing that was a way of experimenting with this emotion.

I basically wrote five books with 'Night Soldiers,' called them novellas, and came in with a 600-page manuscript.

Writing 'Native Guard,' I didn't know I was working on a single book. I began writing that book because I was interested in the lesser-known history of these black soldiers stationed off the coast of my hometown.

Nothing can be as astounding as life. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the sole consolation.

You want fans to connect to the book, even movie fans. But if your sole purpose is to write towards a certain kind of fan, that way leads madness.

Though there might not be any easy answers to the problem of poverty, its most compelling scribes do not resign themselves to representation solely for the sake of those age-old verities of truth and beauty.

When you're trying to force things in a script, it seems like it's getting somewhere, but it isn't real or interesting. All the bad material you've written becomes an albatross around your neck. So I really don't like writing a lot of bad stuff, I prefer to just keep narrowing it down to stuff I think is solid.

I always credited my mother with inspiring me to be a writer because she was such a passionate reader. She read poetry to me as a child. But rather late in life, I've come to appreciate my father, the accountant. He was a solid, organized, get-the-job-done kind of person-and you need that piece of it to be a writer, too.

I never write thinking, 'What would a woman do?' any more than I think, 'What would a man do?' It comes down to what would a solid detective do in these circumstances.

Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.

Writing is a solitary endeavor, but not a lonely one. When you write, your world is populated by the characters you invent, and you feel those people filling your life.

Writing a sitcom compared with writing a novel is a bit like the difference between going on a big, noisy group holiday compared with a solitary march to the South Pole.

It's the same thing in a way, although writing a book is a very solitary thing.

Writing is such a solitary existence, and I can only do it late at night.

I love getting out the house because writing is such a solitary business that even being at the library makes me feel part of the world.

I had no idea how complicated and solitary it could be to write a simple book.

Writing is solitary. You spend so much time alone and in your own mind, telling stories.

When I'm writing a book, I don't have any responsibility to anyone. I'm solitary. I'm writing on my own. I write by hand. And I write every day. I mean, it's part of my daily discipline.

Writing, by nature, is a fairly solitary occupation.

Writing is a way of drifting within my own mind: almost a solitary process, so to speak.

Medicine has an immediate impact, the ability to do good. Writing is such a solitary activity.

My two bits here are that writing is a solitary job but there are times when one needs to discuss the work, and see what's working and what's not.

Normally, with stand-up, it's quite solitary, you write the material on your own, you perform it on your own, it's all very much on you. Your own thoughts. You have to sort of modulate your own performance.