The Writing Life Quotes

The Writing Life Quote of the day

The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger--but recognize the opportunity.

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else's script.

You define your own life. Don't let other people write your script.

In the book of life every page has two sides: we human beings fill the upper side with our plans, hopes and wishes, but providence writes on the other side, and what it ordains is seldom our goal.

A life spent writing has taught me to be wary of words. Those that seem clearest are often the most treacherous.

The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you.

Coming up with ideas is the easiest thing on earth. Putting them down is the hardest.

You write your life story by the choices you make.

Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try.

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Love is the bee that carries the pollen from one heart to another.

It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

I have a great many opinions about writing, but I'm afraid that all of them are unprintable

To be able to talk to your heart’s content about a book you like with someone who feels the same way about it is one of the greatest joys that life can offer.

Drafting is like painting the Golden Gate Bridge.The closer you get to the end, the more you start to worry about the beginning.

No art ever came out of not risking your neck.

Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.

Those who write are writers. Those who wait are waiters.

The most important story we'll ever write in life is our own-not with ink, but with our daily choices.

Life sometimes gets in the way of writing.

We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad.

Buffon said unreservedly, "Genius is simply patience carried to the extreme." To those who asked how he achieved fame he replied: "By spending forty years of my life bent over my writing desk."

Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.

Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

Writing is making sense of life.

Text is just ink on a page until a reader comes along and gives it life.

In order to write about life first you must live it.

When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about

... I am with fire between my teeth and still nothing but my blank page.

You can't write the same book twice. Though I've been in historical musical situations, I can't go back and do that again. And though I run into artistic crises, they keep my life interesting.

I've had a very sheltered life. What can happen to you if you stay home writing all day?

Writing a book isn’t an easy process nor is it always enjoyable, but it is one of life’s most satisfying achievements.

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.

People often ask me how long it takes me to write a play, and I tell them 'all of my life.'

History has to live with what was here, clutching and close to fumbling all we had - it is so dull and gruesome how we die, unlike writing, life never finishes.

I write for myself and my goal is bringing that world and that experience of black Americans to life on the stage and giving it a space there.

In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.

When you start writing the magic comes when the characters seem to take on a life of their own and write the words for themselves.

The act of giving voice to this spiritual suffering is, in my view, the sacred duty of the writer.

I'm learning more about life when I'm playing too, and writing music. I'm learning more about life, the connection.

It's impossible to write about Native life without humor-that's how people maintain sanity.

I'm blessed, because I enjoy every part of my life. I enjoy writing songs. I've been trying to write songs since I was five years old.

As regards plot I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots. And as I think a plot desirable and almost necessary, I have this extra grudge against life.

Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy.

Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.

I don't really write jokes. I wait for stuff to happen in life, and then I tell it on stage.