Writing Quotes

Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse)

Almost all words do have colour and nothing is more pleasant than to utter a pink word and see someone's eyes light up and know it is a pink word for him or her too.

All words are pegs to hang ideas on.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.

Always be a poet, even in prose.

Writing is storytelling and all of us are authors, not just of words but of reality. You are the author of your life, so go out and live! Then never quit writing about it!

There is more good writing and good acting in any ten minutes of Twister than in, say, all of Citizen Kane.

I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I'll be sending messages on a Ouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side

I don't write hits for myself, or for other artists, or to just be writing it. I write it because I was born to do this. I was given this gift and I'm making the most of my opportunity.

Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.

For me, writing something in the spirit of Halloween is like Mother Teresa writing on charity and sacrifice. It's just second nature to me.

If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.

Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.

Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.

The White House is giving George W. Bush intelligence briefings. You know? some of these jokes just write themselves.

He who writes prose builds his temple to Fame in rubble; he who writes verses builds it in granite. - Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton

I write against violence. I write against fascism. I write against one person dominating another.

Whenever we can make 25 words do the work of 50, we halve the area in which looseness and disorganization can flourish.

Most rats read. Our frustration is, we cannot hold a pen to write.

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia

As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn't seen before. Writing a poem is always a process of discovery.

He who writes poetry is not a poet. He whose poetry has become his life, and who has made his life his poetry - it is he who is a poet.

I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it shall be behind me.

Writing is both my expression to the world and my way to hide from it - you get who I am without actually seeing me.

The journalism school helped me develop writing skills, and I had been enjoying cartooning from a very young age. My interest in puppetry, however, came much later.

Writing songs is about trying to connect with people on a deeper spiritual level - but I'm not a fan of contemporary Christian music.

To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.

As a writer one is allowed to have conversations with oneself. What is considered sane in writers is made for the rest of the human race.

Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.

On their sofas of spice and feathers, the concubines also slept fretfully. In those days the Earth was still flat, and people dreamed often of falling over edges.

The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it.

I can't help but laugh at all of you writing fake stories about me. I was not in any hit and runs. I don't drink so the DUI is false.

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.

We are storied folk. Stories are what we are; telling and listening to stories is what we do.

I probably spent more time listening to albums than writing songs. But I think that gave me all the tricks in terms of wordplay, from how I pronounced my words to the actual delivery.

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Writing is a miracle. You can travel anywhere in the world, to any time and any place — and still be home in time to have dinner.

Writing an upbeat aphorism is a temptation, but decorum forbids.

From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

As long as I don't write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.

To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.

I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.

I once asked Barbara Stanwyck the secret of acting. She said: 'Just be truthful - and if you can fake that, you've got it made'.

I am an improviser, ... I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it all, it is all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it down for others, but it was originally improvised.

When I started writing 'A Million Little Pieces,' I felt like it was the right story with the style I had been looking for, and I just kept going.

The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.