Top 100 Do You Write Quotes
#1. How do you write when you're not miserable? The solution, of course, is to make yourself miserable about not writing.
Jerry Stahl
#2. 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
#3. Why do you write strong female characters?
Because you're still asking me that question.
Joss Whedon
#4. What do you write in those forms?" I asked.
"Nothing. I just do this to look threatening.
Jennifer Echols
#5. 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
#6. So, why do you write these strong female characters?
Because you're still asking me that question.
[Equality Now speech, May 15, 2006]
Joss Whedon
#7. People say, "How do you write songs?" I say, "Patience." I may have a track that's hot, but no words. I'll just let it sit for years, because I know they're going to meet. They'll find it.
Ben Harper
#8. People ask me: "Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way the others do?" ... The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.
M.F.K. Fisher
#9. I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.'
W. H. Auden
#10. It has no meaning, what do you use to write, the only thing that is important is: what do you write. A machine to write a book instead of a writer is not invented yet, and probably will never be.
Stanislaw Lem
#11. There is a communication of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine is drunk. And that is my answer when people ask me: Why do you write about hunger, and not wars or love.
M.F.K. Fisher
#12. People always ask, 'How do you write so many books?' And I say, I work a lot. I work six or seven days a week.
R.L. Stine
#13. How do you solve a mystery? How do you write a book? The techniques for starting both are surprisingly similar. Find an intriguing question and, pen and dagger tucked under cloak, search for clues.
Claire Cameron
#14. How do you write a letter on the spur of the moment? And then post it? On the spur of the moment?
Edward Davies
#15. Why do you write meaningless philosophy?" you asked.
"Because it gives meaning to life," I whispered with deep empathy.
Debasish Mridha
#16. (Authors Publish asked WHY DO YOU WRITE?) "Voices...won't...stop...talking. When I drive the car, walk the dog, stir the soup--voices make me write down what they say and shape a world to catch the words.
Delaney Green
#17. Why do you write? he asked. So I can take my love for you and give it to the world, I reply. Because you won't take it from me.
Lang Leav
#18. The short answer to 'Why do you write' is - I suppose I write for some of the same reasons I read: to live a double life; to go places I haven't been; to examine life on earth; to come to know people in ways, and at depths, that are otherwise impossible; to be surprised.
Margaret Atwood
#20. Do you write novels?" I said.
"Novels, Lord no," she said. "I can't even stay married.
Pam Houston
#21. How do you write for children? I really have never figured that out. So I decided to just ignore it
Maurice Sendak
#23. You travel all over," the woman said. "Do you write about your travels?" I said, Yes, I did. Articles. Books. Whatever. "You must write Paul Theroux-type travel books," she said. I said, Exactly, and told her why.
Paul Theroux
#24. Everyone said, 'Well, you're very old for a first novel,' and I said, 'How do you write when you haven't lived? How do you write when you have no experience? How do you write straight out of university?'
Kate Atkinson
#25. If you have something to say, here's what you do: You write it down on a piece of paper, you go out in the lobby, and then you go home and you kill yourself.
Louis C.K.
#26. Someone asked me, 'How do you write a book?' I said, 'I live with a pen in one hand.
Carla H. Krueger
#27. How is your handwriting?" I ask. "Do you write in pencil or pen?" They stare back at me with squinting eyes and a look that needs no words. "Get with it granddad.
Fennel Hudson
#28. How do you write? You write, man, you write, that's how ... If you practice an art faithfully it will make you wise, and most writers can use a little wising up.
William, Saroyan
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.
Ernest Hemingway,
#33. 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
#34. Every time you do something that is important, write down what you expect will happen.
Peter Drucker
#35. 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
#36. Life is this great big blackboard, and on it you write all the things that you do.
Elizabeth Edwards
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. You can't teach people to write well. Writing well is something God lets you do or declines to let you do.
Kurt Vonnegut
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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,
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. You write for the people in high school who ignored you. We all do.
Carolyn Kizer
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. You're writing your life as you go - the question becomes, how do you want to write your life?
Hill Harper
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. It's amazing what you can do when you get creative.
A.D. Posey
#82. If you can't write clearly, you probably don't think nearly as well as you think you do.
Kurt Vonnegut
#83. Ideas are the most fragile things in the world, and if you do not write them down, they will be lost forever.
Phil Cooke
#84. 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.
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. 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
#91. Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.
Walter Benjamin
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. 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
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. 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
#100. 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
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