Top 100 Can T Write Quotes
#1. I think my books talk about kids learning to like and respect themselves and each other. You can't write a message book; you just tell the best story you know how to tell.
Paula Danziger
#2. It's all in the opposition of the thumbs. For all we know, whales sing in three act plays - but they can't write them down.
Bronwen Wallace
#3. I know that there's a cultural expectation that women be nurturing, delicate flowers. And I am. So delicate. But that doesn't mean I can't write a good, gory murder scene.
Chelsea Cain
#4. The most important thing for aspiring writers is for them to give themselves permission to be brave on the page, to write in the presence of fear, to go to those places that you think you can't write - really that's exactly what you need to write.
Cheryl Strayed
#5. To read and to write. Some writers have to be told to write. They think their job is to meet agents and have experiences and they can just be rich and famous. Their job is to write. Some really don't realize that. And you can't write unless you read.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#6. You can't write novels about people who are timid, risk-averse and passive. Or you can, but they're called literary novels.
Ken Follett
#7. I need quiet and solitude to work. Darkness is best. If I am wide awake, I can't write.
Jeff Lindsay
#8. We can't write a serious novel in the 21st century without acknowledging the inescapable self-awareness we're stuck with. The idea we're surrounded by falsehoods and lies. It's hard for the thinking person to believe in narratives. And yet we want some place to invest our belief.
Michael Helm
#9. The problem with taxation is that authors can't write off whiskey as a business expense.
Bryan Way
#10. There is a part of me that has to depend on fantasy, because if you can't be somewhat of a fantasy person, then you can't write
Stevie Nicks
#11. Despite all of our technological advances, content creation still requires time, inspiration, and a certain amount of sweat. There aren't any shortcuts. You can't write an algorithm for it. You can't predict it. You can't code it.
Shawn Amos
#13. You can't write good satirical fiction in America because reality will quickly outdo anything you might invent.
Philip Roth
#14. In general, each form is a relief from the other forms. I can't write a novel after a novel. I just use up all the material each time, and I need to rest.
Rick Moody
#15. You can't write music right unless you know how the man that'll play it plays poker.
Duke Ellington
#16. Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can't write, can surely review.
James Russell Lowell
#17. My show business career doesn't mean I can't write a symphony. It just means I was never asked to write one.
Marvin Hamlisch
#18. Think you can't write women? Don't. Write people and make them women.
Lauren Faust
#19. I can't write the same book over and over again ... let it go, once it's gone!
Jane Gardam
#20. If you make your living writing, and you can't write anything, it's over. It's very frightening.
Sting
#21. I can't write a scene unless I've visualized it. Unless I can actually see it, and that's why a lot of reviewers have said my books are very cinematic, because I actually do see them before I write them.
Eric Van Lustbader
#22. I need to write in a small room - the smaller the better. I can't write in a big room where someone might sneak up behind my back.
Douglas Preston
#24. I can't write, I am not a writer, you say. Remember no one has ever become a writer without actually writing
Bangambiki Habyarimana
#25. If you don't remember childhood and you idealize it, you can't write books for kids because they're not real. Kids pick that up.
Robert Munsch
#26. Sid Vicious began the age of participation in which everyone could be the artist. Sid proved that you don't have to play well to be the star. You can play badly, or not even at all. I endorsed that attitude. If you can't write songs, no problem - simply steal one and change it to your taste.
Malcolm McLaren
#27. What the devil to do with the sentence "Who the devil does he think he's fooling?" You can't write "Whom the devil- ".
Paul Goodman
#28. Oh, I collect facts and quotes when I can't write, and I can't write most of the time. I do a little chance operation sometimes where I flip through outdated reference books to see if anything will strike me as beautiful or momentous. Library roulette, I call it.
Jenny Offill
#29. You can't write about a horrible restaurant - if it's a Ma & Pa restaurant no one wants to see you kick Ma & Pa in the chops.
Robert Sietsema
#30. Lillian is one of those disagreeable people who yet have some redeeming qualities, so that you can't write them off entirely - but you sure wish you could.
Charlaine Harris
#31. If you can't write at least a paragraph on your goal then it is clearly not compelling enough. You need to either find the right reason or find the right goal.
Tony Johnson
#32. I can't write a lie; the world of imagination is no good. I objectively capture my own experiences and those of my friends. I want to put true feelings into words. If I make a song when I'm sad, it's a dark one, but I think that's good. No matter when I want to be true to myself.
Ayumi Hamasaki
#33. I've come to the realization that I really only want to write books that maybe I can't write.
Markus Zusak
#34. I can't write a novel without first really doing reporting. I don't even call it research; it's reporting. That process is very important to the granularity of my writing. I have to know what the reality is so I can be more convincing in the writing.
Lorraine Adams
#35. I asked him, How could we have a press column if we can't write about other work done in the press?
Sydney Schanberg
#36. You can't write something actively trying to please everyone - you're going to end up with watery soup that way. You just have to write stories you would want to read and hope that people like them.
Kelly Sue DeConnick
#37. If you can't write your song in half an hour, you're in trouble - which is always true.
Garth Hudson
#38. I have this magpie instinct for the next glittering object. There are one or two things I know I can't write about, though: DIY, cricket, automobile repair. I could study it for a lifetime and not produce a word on the carburettor.
Simon Schama
#39. I really can't write fantasy. I cannot invent a world which does not exist. And I can't read fantasy either. As soon as I realise I'm reading a book that hasn't got its roots in a reality I can comprehend, I switch off.
Michael Morpurgo
#40. I'm going to spend my life writing poems, turning them into music that will affect people and touch their hearts. I'm going to write the songs that people can't write for themselves.
Stevie Nicks
#41. You can't write poems about trees when the woods are full of policemen.
Bertolt Brecht
#42. Definition of rock journalism: People who can't write, doing interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles for people who can't read.
Frank Zappa
#44. One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry.
Nathalie Sarraute
#45. You can't write about people out of textbooks, and you can't use jargon. You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence.
Katherine Anne Porter
#46. One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.
Nathalie Sarraute
#47. It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and write it sentence by sentence - no first draft. I can't write five words but that I can change seven.
Dorothy Parker
#49. He can't think, he can't write. There's no discernible talent.
Harold Bloom
#50. My ear is not working, my poetry ear. I can't write a line that doesn't sound like pots and pans falling out of the cupboard.
Jane Kenyon
#51. I can't write in a whole lot of different styles, trying to please the highbrows one time and the lowbrows the next. I pretty much have a basic style I employ.
Harvey Pekar
#52. Writers can't write as fast as governments make wars; because to write demands thinking.
Bertolt Brecht
#53. You can't write a song out of thin air you have to feel and know what you are writing about.
Irving Berlin
#54. The way that I work is that I try to work in metaphors, and you can't write a metaphor unless you know where you're going, so I always think about the future.
J.H. Wyman
#56. No, I can't write treatments, I think there's a danger with treatments. That you ... you write out your first excitement and enthusiasm in a prose treatment.
Ronald Harwood
#57. You really can't write unless you read. You have to know what the game is all about.
Harold Brodkey
#58. I am sorry for people who can't write letters. But I suspect also that you and I ... love to write them because it's kind of like working without really doing it.
Elizabeth Bishop
#59. There's some things I can't write about, just terrible personal tragedies.
Harry Connick Jr.
#60. However many resolutions one makes, one's pen, like water, always finds its own level, and one can't write in any way other than one's own.
Vita Sackville-West
#61. You can't write well what you don't read for pleasure. If it doesn't entertain you, it's not going to entertain anyone else.
Nora Roberts
#62. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing.
Ann Patchett
#63. A person who's only suffering can't write a poem. There are choices to be made, and you need to be objective.
Edward Hirsch
#64. I have to tell you, I'll be right up front about it: I'm the governor of the state of Connecticut, and I can't write anything well.
Dannel Malloy
#65. I'll be writing until I can't write anymore. It's a compulsion with me. I love writing.
J.K. Rowling
#66. You can't write well with only the nice parts of your character, and only about nice things. And I don't want even to try anymore. I want to use everything, including hate and envy and lust and fear.
Alison Lurie
#67. I always think plot is what you fall back on if you can't write, to keep things going.
Meg Rosoff
#68. If you can't write, read.
If you can't read, walk.
Or walk and read, then write.
Joyce Rachelle
#69. I can't write things. I'm embarrassed all the time about that, particularly if people don't know that about me.
Dannel Malloy
#70. I think you can't write with anger. I think it always has to be with a wink. There always has to be an element of hope in what you write. Otherwise you're just getting mad and it's not going to be fun for anybody.
Mark Russell
#71. Certainly I had a really terrible time with 'Emotionally Weird.' When I finished it, I thought, 'I can't write any more.'
Kate Atkinson
#72. I can't write. I would love to. I don't really have an interest in it, to be honest. I'll leave that to my fiance.
Jennifer Aniston
#73. It's only five rappers out of Atlanta who bussin and I'm one of 'em; the other four you know who you are; but if you gotta think twice (well) shawty ya ain't nice; regardless of ya publishin' deal ya can't write
T.I.
#74. I can't write. I can handle bits of simple-minded advert copy or a poster slogan, so answering questions is about all I'm good for.
Charles Saatchi
#75. Under the Assads, Kurds were forbidden from learning their own language at school, or even from speaking it in the military. The result is a generation of Syrian Kurds, many now in late middle age, who can't write their own language.
Luke Harding
#76. If you can't write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don't have a clear idea.
David Belasco
#77. Phd dissertations are for people who can't write books.
Anonymous
#78. Sometimes writers of no talent at all can write great acting scenes. Sometimes the very best writers can't write scenes that come to life.
Anita Loos
#79. Life is a very orderly thing, but in fiction there is a huge liberation and freedom. I can do what I like. There's nothing that says I can't write a page of full stops. There is no 'should' involved, although you wouldn't know that from literary reviews and critics.
Kate Atkinson
#80. Writing for the theatre is so different to writing for anything else. Because what you write is eventually going to be spoken. That's why I think so many really powerful novelists can't write a play - because they don't understand that it's spoken - that it hits the air. They don't get that.
Sam Shepard
#81. When I'm writing I can write anywhere; when I'm not writing I can't write anywhere.
Meg Rosoff
#82. My darlings, if I can't write dark, epic music, I can't live!
Amy Lee
#83. Fiction must compete with first-rate reporting. If you cannot write a story that is equal to a factual account of battle in the streets or demonstrations, then you can't write a story.
John Cheever
#84. I can't write my life story without Emmitt and Troy. They can't write their life stories without me. We're tied together forever. This is a day to remember for the rest of our lives.
Michael Irvin
#85. You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#86. You can't write something to please someone.
Sean Durkin
#87. I can't paint. I can't write. I can't sing. But I can decorate and run a house, and light it, and heat it, and have it like a living thing.
Elsie De Wolfe
#88. I met this woman who was a hundred, this housekeeper, a hundred years old. I interviewed her. She just told me about her whole life. She's like, 'I can't read, I can't write; I can tell you who I was working for, and I can tell you the year, but who was president?'
Tate Taylor
#89. I'm a long distance runner, and I get my best ideas when I'm out running. It also helps that I can't write it down immediately - if you hold onto an idea, other things will stick on it.
Patrick Ness
#90. People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.
Anna Quindlen
#91. I just can't write and listen to music at the same time.
Shane McCrae
#92. I can't write every day. I have to skip a day in between. If I try to do it every day, nothing comes.
William Sleator
#94. Tax day was yesterday. And marijuana growers are complaining that they can't write off a single expense thanks to federal laws. Well, apparently someone tried to claim the Phish tour as his home office and that's not going to happen.
Conan O'Brien
#95. It seems like songwriting for most songwriters is only one season in their life, a five or ten year period. For me, I don't worry about it, but I know there might come a day when I can't write anymore, or don't have good song ideas or the fire to do it anymore.
Rodney Clawson
#96. I never troll for material. It simply presents itself, and is always unmistakable. This is why I want to roll my eyes when people interrupt themselves in the middle of some story they're telling me to say, "You know you can't write about this."
Dani Shapiro
#97. Out of frustration, you do drugs when you can't write. On occasion that might work, but usually what happens is that once you've had on drink, you just want another drink.
Steve Jordan
#98. If you can't write your own material, you have very little chance of making it as a comedian.
Rodney Dangerfield
#99. If you can't write the next line, well, you're dead. The past doesn't matter.
Charles Bukowski
#100. I was a new writer and I was supposed to write all the time, wasn't I? I had not yet discovered that there are times when one can't write, one shouldn't write, times for thought, for deepening, or just reading, or simply living.
Stanley Crawford
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
