Quotes of: I-write Keyword

Writing is a muscle that needs to be exercised every day: The more you write, the easier it becomes.

Jane Green

'The Master and Margarita' is deeply to do with the unconscious. It is a story about a man who writes a story in a time when he's not supposed to write that story: the story of Pontius Pilate.

Simon McBurney

The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.

Robert Morgan

When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love.

Umberto Eco

My message to anyone who's afraid that they can't write music when they're happy is 'Just trust the passion.' The passion can write a lot of things.

Alanis Morissette

When I'm writing music, I'm not playing a character. I'm not Alice Cooper or Gene Simmons or someone like that, who has acknowledged that they are writing music for a character.

Trent Reznor

If you are going to write, nothing will stop you, and if you are not going to write, nothing will make you.

Alan Garner

You will learn more about writing from one hour of reading than you will in six hours of writing.

Life

Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think about what you shall write.

William Cobbett

You write a hit play the same way you write a flop

William Saroyan

The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.

Ben Fountain

I craved a form of naive realism. I paid special attention, I craned my readerly neck whenever a London street I knew was mentioned, or a style of frock, a real public person, even a make of car. Then, I thought, I had a measure, I could guage the qu...

Sweet Tooth

Why do you want to become an author? I will accept only one answer. If it is because you feel you can write better than you can do anything else then go ahead and do it without frills and flourishes. Stick to your present job and write in your spare ...

Death on the Air and Other Stories

Maybe everyone does have a novel in them, perhaps even a great one. I don't believe it, but for the purposes of this argument, let's say it's so. Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imag...

The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life

On of the reasons that I wanted to study literature was because it exposed everything. Writers looked for secrets that had never been mined. Every writer has to invent their own magical language, in order to describe the indescribable. They might see...

The Girl Who Was Saturday Night

Don't always be appraising yourself, wondering if you are better or worse than other writers. "I will not Reason and Compare," said Blake; "my business is to Create." Besides, since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of Time...

If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

People ask me how to start writing. I tell them that 'Creating Creates Creativity'. Put your notes and outline aside. Start with one anecdote or conversation, and that will lead to another and another. It's the steps, the path, not the final destinat...

Inside and Outside: Messages of Hope from a Life Long Hiker and Depression Survivor

Collaborative workshops and writers' peer groups hadn't been invented when I was young. They're a wonderful invention. They put the writer into a community of people all working at the same art, the kind of group musicians and painters and dancers ha...

Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew

Most—but not all—of the writers I knew then were young men who cherished their independence, were unconcerned about job security, and were serious about their writing. They didn’t want to be anyone’s employee if it interfered with their writi...

Lord of Publishing: A Memoir

People talk about mainstream fiction and sf as though they were two quite different kinds of writing, and fantasy as well, as though it was quite different. But I think this a false distinction, that it is a labelling that helps librarians, and peopl...

Shaking a Leg: Collected Journalism and Writings

And what about those [writers' workshop] critiques, by the way? How valuable are they? Not very, in my experience, sorry. A lot of them are maddeningly vague. someone may say. It seems to occur to few of the attendees that if you have a feeling you j...

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft