Do You Write Quotes

#1. If you're going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.

Louis L'Amour

#2. It's extremely difficult to describe interestingly what happens on the pitch. Thousands of journalists write millions of words every week trying to do it, so your chances of avoiding cliche are very slim. And you're trying to write fiction, not a match report.

Mal Peet

#3. To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care. You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy. But a writer always tries, I think, to be a part of a solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.

Anne Lamott

#4. Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.

Ernest Hemingway,

#5. By the time you write the last page you have done half the book. The other half tends to get done in about five weeks; I do several drafts, very, very furiously rewriting. I literally do more or less nothing else and I stick with it and go through it and I begin to hate it.

Terry Pratchett

#6. Every time you do something that is important, write down what you expect will happen.

Peter Drucker

#7. You can write and visualize goals all you want, but if you do not take action, your goals will never become a reality. To obtain a goal you have never before achieved will require tasks you have never before done.

Cameron C. Taylor

#8. Life is this great big blackboard, and on it you write all the things that you do.

Elizabeth Edwards

#9. When you teach, it's sometimes necessary to consciously not write for a month or two - and then pick a time in the future to sink back in. It makes you less frustrated and more in control. I do best when I give myself breaks and come back hungry.

Tom Barbash

#10. If you ever want to know why I'm not on a record label, look at 'The X Factor!' Honestly, of all the people that strive to break barriers in music and do good things and write great lyrics, not one of them would ever pass the first round on any of these competitions.

John Lydon

#11. I always wanted praise, and I always wanted attention; I won't lie to you. I was a jazz critic, and that wasn't good enough for me. I wanted people to write about me, not me about them. So I thought, 'What could I do? I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't act or anything like that. OK, I can write.'

Harvey Pekar

#12. You have a strange relationship with calamity when you're a writer: you write about it; as an artist, you objectify and fetishize it. You render life into material, and that's a creepy thing to do.

Tony Kushner

#13. Either you write songs or you don't. And if you do write songs like I do, I think there's a natural desire to want to make records.

Roger Waters

#14. How do you write when you're not miserable? The solution, of course, is to make yourself miserable about not writing.

Jerry Stahl

#15. It takes a lot of energy and a lot of neurosis to write a novel. If you were really sensible, you'd do something else.

Lawrence Durrell

#16. It's easy to write a short story and frighten people for five pages, but to work at length, when you do it as in 'The Turn Of The Screw' or 'A Christmas Carol,' it's different; you have to build it and build it.

Susan Hill

#17. I always wanted to be a writer, but Alan Moore's work and help inspired me to write comics. In some ways the biggest influence on me writing was Punk. There was the idea that you could do something by simply doing it.

Neil Gaiman

#18. When people ask that question, it's very hard to nail down a formula or a circumstance that I always write in, but I definitely do believe that there have been moments, musically, when I have channeled something, you know?

Kimbra

#19. Every year I tell myself that I'm not going to read any reviews and then I do. We're all human and when I read something negative it hurts. I think when you write it's part of the game, you're going to get some good reviews and some bad reviews and that's how it goes. I don't write for the reviews.

Jodi Picoult

#20. I like you but you mightn't feel the same way about me, and I wouldn't blame you. To save us both from any awkward moments I've figured out an easy way to do this. Nod if you're even slightly interested in getting to know me. Write a ten page explanation if you're not.

Bill Condon

#21. Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don't know what it is yet.

Cheryl Strayed

#22. The goal is always just to write the best song that you can write. I mean, the process for writing a song is the process for writing a song. It's not something I look at it as something I need to do something different.

Chris Stapleton

#23. You can't teach people to write well. Writing well is something God lets you do or declines to let you do.

Kurt Vonnegut

#24. Are you sorry? Do you wish you could do it all again and go off and write novels instead of being a teacher?
No. You can't trade what is for what might have been.

Lurlene McDaniel

#25. Write it as it is, don't try to make it like this or that. You can't do it in anybody else's way-you will have to make a way of your own.

Sarah Orne Jewett

#26. Don't write for money. Write because you love to do something. If you write for money, you won't write anything worth reading.

Ray Bradbury

#27. I think it's important to let each thing you write teach you how to write it. You must listen to what you do. Let it be in control. I don't step in until I know what it demands of me.

Jill Alexander Essbaum

#28. Since my father is a musician as well, he taught me growing up that if you can play jazz, you can learn all instruments and write on them. He wanted me to be a songwriter that can do anything in any genre. I'm all about doing every genre.

Meghan Trainor

#29. If you mean do I use the guitar when I'm sitting at home writing stuff, then basically no, never. All I would ever write would be stuff that my fingers easily fall into.

Fred Frith

#30. I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

Ernest Hemingway,

#31. Robert Ludlum, all of them, write the absolute best they can. You can't tone it down. You just do what you do, and if it comes out literary, so be it.

Alan Furst

#32. Why do you write?' Because I love words and stories so much. Because I would be grief stricken every day of my life if I couldn't write. Because I'm obsessed and compelled. Because I'd be utterly useless at anything else.

Jennifer Donnelly

#33. Writing is very good for household tasks. Because you'd rather fix a dripping tap or paint an old wall - you'd rather do almost anything than sit and write. I have to reach a point of obsession in order to write, and so I find starting a book incredibly difficult.

Damon Galgut

#34. Why do you write strong female characters?
Because you're still asking me that question.

Joss Whedon

#35. For me now, it's about what you would write and what you wouldn't write, and that's how I select what I am going to do. It can be quite nice being brought a concept by a studio for me to work on.

Neil Jordan

#36. You write for the people in high school who ignored you. We all do.

Carolyn Kizer

#37. Why do you have to be out of town to write a postcard? I want a to write a postcard to my neighbor: "I still live near you!" The guy sees me go into my apartment, flips the card over, it's just a picture of me holding a rifle.

Jim Gaffigan

#38. I wanted to write in film or something like that. I thought acting was an embarrassing thing to say you wanted to do, especially when you're young. It seemed really uncool.

Max Minghella

#39. If you're driving, and a cop is behind you, you automatically think they're going to pull you over, but cops have so much more going on than to think about pulling you over. The last thing a real cop wants to do is write a ticket. That's the truth.

Manny Montana

#40. You can try to reach an audience, but you just write what comes out of you and you just hope that it is accepted. You do not write specifically to a generation.

Leon Uris

#41. Write down five things you love to do. Next, write down five things that you're really good at. Then just try to match them up! Revisit your list once a year to make sure you're on the right track.

Hugh Jackman

#42. One has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm and so on. So, it is what you don't write that frequently gives what you do write its power.

Toni Morrison

#43. I am somebody who usually writes out the rough draft in longhand. Then I type it into the computer, and that is where I do my editing. I find that if I write it on the computer, I go too quick. So I like getting that first draft out and then typing it in; you are less self-conscious about it.

Barack Obama

#44. You're writing your life as you go - the question becomes, how do you want to write your life?

Hill Harper

#45. My dad dying was actually a reason for me to stop music properly for about a year, because he was a big supporter. All I wanted to do was write a song about him and, you know, when something's too fresh, you can't quite word it.

Gin Wigmore

#46. I wrote you, you are mine," it continued, its voice as hard as its diamond eyes. "But I do not write everything you do and think. I do not write every decision you make. Not because I cannot-but because I will not.

Ashlee Willis

#47. My experience as a writer is that you really do write seven and eight pages to find the paragraph you were after all along.

Anne Lamott

#48. Whatever you do, make sure you want to write more than you want to be a writer. Make sure you want to act more than you want to be an actor. That is what will sustain you.

Bradley Whitford

#49. I hope never to retire. I write so many because it's the thing I like to do most - to write. And if you write every day, you just naturally get a lot of books.

Eve Bunting

#50. What I do is I write mainly about very personal and rather lonely feelings, and I explore them in a different way each time. You know, what I do is not terribly intellectual. I'm a pop singer for Christ's sake. As a person, I'm fairly uncomplicated.

David Bowie

#51. People do support themselves as artists and writers, so there's no need to be all doom and gloom about it. You just have to push forward. You have to follow your vision and hope for the best. You have to write for love.

Cheryl Strayed

#52. you say you often feel this madness. what do you do when it comes upon you?
I write poetry.
is poetry madness?
non-poetry is madness.
what is madness?
madness is ugliness.
what is ugly?
to each man, something different.

Charles Bukowski

#53. I think it's really hard to make songs that pursue an agenda. You can kind of do it a little bit through a character, so the character gives voice to something or their story, the story of the character tells you something, but, for me anyway, it's really hard to write directly about politics.

David Byrne

#54. People do amazing things for love. Books are full of wonderful stories about this kind of stuff, and stories aren't just fantasies, you know. They're so much a part of the people who write them that they practically teach their readers invaluable lessons about life.

Mahbod Seraji

#55. Ask yourself, "Why do I want to be in shape?" and write all ... Put your list everywhere to constantly remind yourself why you're doing what you're doing and how your life will improve by becoming fitter.

Jillian Michaels

#56. It's amazing what you can do when you get creative.

A.D. Posey

#57. If you can't write clearly, you probably don't think nearly as well as you think you do.

Kurt Vonnegut

#58. Ideas are the most fragile things in the world, and if you do not write them down, they will be lost forever.

Phil Cooke

#59. When they write a bad review, and you agree with it, that's the worst feeling. When you know you've done what you wanted and the best you could and you love the outcome, then you look at everything differently. Not everyone's going to love everything you do.

Albert Hammond Jr.

#60. You may well ask me why ... I took the time to write [books]. I can only reply that I do not know. There was no why about it. I had to: that was all.

George Bernard Shaw

#61. Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know.

Raymond Chandler

#62. I pretty much just focus on making the records - unless I'm self-releasing them; then I do my own thing. But at some point, you have to stop worrying about chains of distribution, or it takes out of your time to write.

John Darnielle

#63. If, while watching the sun set on a used-car lot in Los Angeles, you are struck by the parallels between this image and the inevitable fate of humanity, do not, under any circumstances, write it down.

Fran Lebowitz

#64. I do sit down every day and make myself write. I want 2,000 words every day or 3 single-space pages a day. I think if you are on a deadline, you have to be disciplined. If you turn things in late, you will find yourself without a contract.

Michelle Moran

#65. Here in New York City you can now walk around smoking weed and all they will do if they see you is write you a ticket. Unfortunately, the ticket will be to a Jets game.

David Letterman

#66. Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.

Walter Benjamin

#67. Stop beating yourself up over all the days you didn't work on your story. Focus on what you can do today.

Sit down, and write.

M. Kirin

#68. As a result of the success achieved by so many clients who used my approach, I was told to write a book, instead of breathing fire and brimstone about the 'mystery' being built up around diet and disempowering messages that only other people can do it for you.

Emma James

#69. I write most of my stories the way people talk, complete with an occasional run-on sentences and stuff that seems to go around in a few circles before making its point. In a comedy, you can do that.

Dan Alatorre

#70. I didn't go to high school. I think that after you learn to read and write and do your numbers and flush the toilet behind yourself, you don't need no more schoolin'. You need to get out in the water and swim.

Wilford Brimley

#71. One day you will take me completely out of myself, I'll do what the angels cannot do. Your eyelash will write on my cheek the poem that hasn't been thought of.

Rumi

#72. The neatest thing about television is that they write for you ... They find out what you can do, what you do best, how it works, and how they can use you.

Ann B. Davis

#73. You should not do an autobiography if you want to tell the truth. There are a lot of things I know about people. If I can't say something good about a person, I don't want to say anything. And since I don't want to say anything bad, I won't write a book.

Abraham A. Ribicoff

#74. You always try to do your own thing. One of the things I wanted to do was to write a book that combines some of the best traits of contemporary fantasy with some of the traits of the historical novel.

George R R Martin

#75. Live your life like the novels that you love to read. Only do the things that when you look back, you are proud of what you accomplished, feel good about how you treated others and didn't regret not doing to trying something. Every day is a new chapter, write something.

Taylor Berke

#76. I'm not a big fan of psychoanalysis: I think if you have mental problems what you need are good pills. But I do think that if you have thinks that bother you, things that are unresolved, the more that you talk about them, write about them, the less serious they become.

Stephen King

#77. Everytime I write, it's a catharsis. Even if I never got paid for it, I'd feel compelled to do it. And that's what makes a true writer. It's not how many readers you have or how many publishing contracts. Do you love to write? Then you're an author. No one can take that away from you.

Piper Vaughn

#78. One thing that worried me was how writers get categorized and so they end up having to write the same kind of book again and again. That is fine if it is what you want to do, but I would rather be locked in the trunk of my car with a weasel than write the same book every three years until I die.

Justin Cronin

#79. It comes back to the same old question people are always asking me: 'When are you going to do a solo record?' Well, if I did, it would probably be similar to 'Baluchitherium,' meaning it would be Van Halen music - which I write anyway - but without singing.

Eddie Van Halen

#80. You always want to write the perfect song. But no one will ever write the perfect song, I guess. I would just like to write on that has all the elements of what I'm tring to do. And I'm working on it. I'm always working on it.

Mose Allison

#81. I don't think it's good to say that you won't do certain things, but I don't necessarily have the natural urge to write.

Alia Shawkat

#82. Although I don't come from a musical background, I was given piano lessons along with my sisters, but I wasn't what you would call a good student. I tended to write songs rather than do scales.

Vonda Shepard

#83. I am the entertainer, I've come to do my show You've heard my latest record, it's been on the radio It took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life It was a beautiful song but it ran too long If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit So they cut it down to 3:05.

Billy Joel

#84. I think if you write music for soundtracks then sometimes you do something that you could never do if the film did not exist.

Claudio Simonetti

#85. If you're a songwriter, you have to do homework. You can exist for a while on the inspiration, but at some point, you have to sit down and have the discipline to write - to finish the poem, as they say.

Jenny Lewis

#86. Writing is like praying, because you stop all other activities, descend into silence, and listen patiently to the depths of your soul, waiting for true words to come. When they do, you thank God because you know the words are a gift, and you write them down as honestly and cleanly as you can.

Helen Prejean

#87. The central virtue of a liberal education is that it teaches you how to write, and writing makes you think. Whatever you do in life, the ability to write clearly, cleanly, and reasonably quickly will prove to be an invaluable skill.

Fareed Zakaria

#88. I would quit while you're ahead. Really. It's an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and you write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it's not any good. I would say just stop now. You don't want to do this to yourself. That's my advice to you.

Philip Roth

#89. You are writing a gospel, A chapter each day, By the deeds that you do And the words that you say. Men read what you write, Whether faithful or true: Just what is the gospel According to you? - SOURCE UNKNOWN

Warren W. Wiersbe

#90. If you write a bad book, mobs do not show up with pitchforks and torches - and odds are you didn't write something bad.

Dan Alatorre

#91. What do you write in those forms?" I asked.
"Nothing. I just do this to look threatening.

Jennifer Echols

#92. How do you write about something, even something real and painful-like suicide-when all of the writing that's been done on that subject has robbed you of any originality of expression?

Jeffrey Eugenides

#93. When I write, it feels like there are two little creatures that sit on each of my shoulders. One whispers, "You can do this. You've got what it takes." The other sounds like my mother-in-law.

Carla H. Krueger

#94. Books inspire a man to embrace the world or flee it. They start wars and end them. They make the men and women who write and publish them vast fortunes, and nearly as quickly can drive them into madness and despair. Stay away from what you do not fathom from now on ...

Matthew Pearl

#95. All these things that enter your head are assignments. You write them up and then throw them out there and if someone wants to do it, your assignment is done.

Martin Short

#96. Mr. Clinton," he had said, when Henry ventured to inquire about a particularly ambiguous examination, "you may write until doomsday for all I care, but if your answers do not coincide with my answers they are wrong. Wrong, sir.

Harper Lee

#97. If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.

Elmore Leonard

#98. I tend to write about towns because that's what I remember best. You can put a boundary on the number of characters you insert into a small town. I tend to create a lot of characters, so this is a sort of restraint on the character building I do for a novel.

Tom Drury

#99. Ah men, why do you want all this attention? I can write poems for myself, make love to a doorknob if absolutely necessary. What do you have to offer me I can't find otherwise except humiliation? Which I no longer need.

Margaret Atwood

#100. 10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer
Write.
Write more.
Write even more.
Write even more than that.
Write when you don't want to.
Write when you do.
Write when you have something to say.
Write when you don't.
Write every day.
Keep writing.

Brian Clark