Quotes About Insight

I think writers, by nature, are more observers instead of participators.

If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.

Many children's writers don't have children of their own.

But it also became the experience, or was the experience, of the writers who were attracted to this kind of humor. They're all men or women who come from the same kind of experience in their own lives.

Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length.

Obviously, a writer can't know everything about what she writes. It's impossible.

Every writer, to some extent, writes about himself.

The spiritual writing of the song is where you're chosen as a vehicle, and it comes from something up above. You don't move; it writes itself. It's very spooky, but that's happened to me just a few times.

All tweets are tasty. Any tweet anybody writes is tasty. So, I try to have each tweet not simply be informative, but have some outlook, some perspective that you might not otherwise had.

As a writer, one is always a little blind to what one writes.

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

I believe that a writer learns from every story he writes, and when you try different things, you learn different lessons. Working with other writers, as in Hollywood or in a shared world series, will also strengthen your skills, by exposing you to new ways of seeing the work, and different approaches to certain creative challenges.

Not everyone writes well from a child's point of view.

Working with a guy like Ice Cube on 'Ride Along,' you learn so much. He's a guy who produces, writes, and directs, so you watch and learn and ask questions. As you go, you learn and figure out what you should and shouldn't do. I do nothing but soak up information.

I am a huge fan of Adrian Piper: how she works, how she reveals her process in the work, how she writes about it.

I keep a diary because I love this writer, David Sedaris, and he writes a lot about his diary, and he inspired me to keep one.

Look, anything any writer writes is going to be on some level autobiographical. Part of the funny/sad thing is that you don't always know how autobiographical you're being.

My inspiration comes from everything, everywhere. Just the people around you, the things you see and most definitely your experiences. Once I get an idea, it pretty much writes itself.

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg - I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

I think when you're writing songs, it's impossible to not draw on personal experiences, whether it be traveling or girls or anything. Just emotions.

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.

The greatest compliment I get about my writing is when people say, 'How did you know so much about me?' And of course, the answer is very simple: 'I just observed myself without sentimentality.'

It is insight into human nature that is the key to the communicator's skill. For whereas the writer is concerned with what he puts into his writings, the communicator is concerned with what the reader gets out of it. He therefore becomes a student of how people read or listen.