How To Write Quotes

#1. Thinking about writing isn't writing. Planning to write isn't writing. Neither is talking about it, posting about it, or complaining how hard it is. These may be part of the process. But only writing is writing.

Jack Ketchum

#2. Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.

David Levithan

#3. When the Great Scorer comes to write against your name, He sees not what you lost or won, but how you played the game!

A.A. Khan

#4. I tend to like to write a song and then think about it for a while. I record a demo of it and then put it away and wait until I've gotten more thoughts on it or get sure exactly how to approach it.

Christopher Owens

#5. You are the poem I never knew how to write and this life is the story I have always wanted to tell.

Tyler Knott Gregson

#6. Bon Jovi is most definitely the key to how I am able to write so much in a day

C.S. Woolley

#7. You should give it to Max, Liesel. See if you can leave it on the bedside table, like all the other things." Liesel watched him as if he'd gone insane. "How, though?" Lightly, he tapped her skull with his knuckles. "Memorize it. Then write it down for him.

Markus Zusak

#8. It's about you putting in the work, practicing every day, and hopefully one day you write the song the whole world wants to get down to. And one day you're going to be sitting next to Ellen DeGeneres talking about how you broke records and rocked the Super Bowl!

Bruno Mars

#9. If I worked as a waiter, I'd go home and write songs and record them. I'd have to. It's the only thing I know how to do. It's the only thing I can do.

Albert Hammond Jr.

#10. We are taught how to read, write, to be polite, cautious and respectful. But no one ever teaches us how to be happy. We have to learn that all on our own.

Nina Guilbeau

#11. Write. Write. Write. Learn how to revise. No story is perfect straight from the keyboard.

Carol Berg

#12. I will always believe in love and I don't care what happens to me or how many times I get my heart broken, or how many breakup songs I write, I'm always going to believe that someday I am going to meet somebody who is actually right for me and he's going to be wonderful and it's going to work out.

Taylor Swift

#13. When I write a novel, I want it to be completely different from a screenplay. I'm very conscious of the difference, and I want novels to work purely as novels. Otherwise I don't see how they'll survive - why don't we just all go to the movies or watch television.

Kazuo Ishiguro

#14. We go to school to learn to work hard for money. I write books and create products that teach people how to have money work hard for them.

Robert Kiyosaki

#15. There are times when I can't believe how much ridiculous stuff happens to me and how brilliant it is to be in a position to write about it.

Carla H. Krueger

#16. One of the surprising things I hadn't expected when I decided to write crime fiction is how much you are expected to be out in front of the public. Some writers aren't comfortable with that. I don't have a problem with that.

Kathy Reichs

#17. I write slowly, and I write many, many drafts. I probably have to work as hard as anyone, and maybe harder, to finish a poem. I often write a poem over years, because it takes me a long time to figure out what to say and how best to say it.

Philip Schultz

#18. I used to feel that if I say something's wrong, I have to say how it could be made right. But what I learned from Kurt Vonnegut was that I could write stories that say I may not have a solution, but this is wrong - that's good enough.

Etgar Keret

#19. I couldn't not write. Sometimes I ask myself, How do people get through life without writing? I write to calm anxiety, to process pain. Writing to me is reflection.

Andrew Holleran

#20. I lead a normal life and I don't assume there is anything I can impart to people. The only reason to write a book would be to make money, and I don't want to do that. To write a book would be going against how I've lived.

Patrick Duffy

#21. I can only speak for myself. But what I write and how I write is done in order to save my own life. And I mean that literally. For me literature is a way of knowing that I am not hallucinating, that whatever I feel/know is.

Barbara Christian

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

Jerry Stahl

#23. I am now of the opinion that children should first be taught the art of drawing before learning how to write.

Mahatma Gandhi

#24. I think you have to love the characters that you write. I don't know how you could possibly write a TV show where you didn't love the characters.

Elizabeth Meriwether

#25. Write backwards. Start from the feeling you want the audience to have at the end and then ask "How might that happen?" continually, until you have a beginning.

Lucy Prebble

#26. 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

#27. If you want to know what you look like, look into a mirror. If you want to know how you think, you should write

Dennis Prager

#28. Adam Berenson knows how to compose, organize an ensemble, do musical research, play solo and trio piano, write for musical journals, and enlist others to his cause. A very fine musician.

Paul Bley

#29. There would be nights when I would wake up and couldn't get back to sleep. So I would go downstairs and write. The staff had a pool going on how many pages of typing I would bring in here in the morning.

Harold H. Greene

#30. 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

#31. I like to write music. And I think exploring with lyrics and figuring out how to make complete songs is fun. I think I have a take on it. I don't know if it's great, but it's an interesting take. It's original.

Stone Gossard

#32. I never really write the jokes. I just sit down over a week or two and try to figure out what I want to talk about. Once I narrow that down, then I start working on the material, like "How do I make this stuff funny?"

Chris Rock

#33. For the years I spent working on it, 'Constellation' was the only novel I knew how to write, so maybe I still abided by the maxim? Regardless, I prefer the maxim: Write what you want to know, rather than what you already know.

Anthony Marra

#34. 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

#35. Sometimes I start with lyrics - rarely - but sometimes I might have an idea for some lyrics that I wanna say. I write them down and figure out how to use that in a melody to write a song.

Leon Bridges

#36. Recognize how truly blessed you are. Take time to count your blessings and write them down. To make your dreams come true you must already be soaking in the very presence you wish to create.

Brandon Bays

#37. I think I have a hard time expressing myself in my relationships. I use songs to tell people how I'm feeling. If I can't say 'I love you,' I'll write a song about it and hope that the person figures it out.

Jenny Lewis

#38. I would challenge anybody in their darkest moment to write what they're grateful for, even stupid little things like the green grass that made them feel good, the friendly conversation they had with somebody on an alevator. You start to realize how rich you are.

Jim Carrey

#39. I love how easy it is to run my business, Writing Workshops Los Angeles, with the help of email and my website. I love that I don't have to use cuneiform, a quill, or a typewriter to write my novels - I love to write on my laptop!

Edan Lepucki

#40. 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

#41. Female artists are the perfect example of a creator: They know how to make life and art with their bodies. Life comes from their bodies, so on a very basic level, they have more to write about.

Brandon Boyd

#42. I wrote a little autobiography about how luck has to do with everything. It's called 'My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business.' A publisher came to me and said, 'Write a book,' so I did. I wanted to call it 'Everybody Else Has Got a Book.'

Dick Van Dyke

#43. I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.

Ernest Hemingway,

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

Hill Harper

#45. On Writing About Nora Hawks
I write about a female character to try, in vain, to understand two things: the purpose of life, and women.

Dennis R. Miller

#46. Write what your heart tells you to write. How you feel it should be written. Some people won't get it, and that's okay.

Kim Cormack

#47. You've gone far away to a place with no horses and very little grass, and you're studying how to write a story with a happy ending. If you can write that ending for yourself, maybe you can come back.

Jennifer Echols

#48. What a man Balzac would have been if he had known how to write.

Gustave Flaubert

#49. I write songs, and I sing them. I never formulated a plan; I can't tell anyone else how to do this. But it feels right, so I just kind of enjoy it and get on with it.

Gabrielle Aplin

#50. Like, even when I speak, I think I speak the same way I write. I kind of see it a certain way, and it leads me to write it exactly how I'm seeing it.

Anthony Hamilton

#51. She'll be your dance partner, Jordan"
"Her? She's much too good. I'm scared!"
"Remember the feeling. Someday you'll want to write about it, and then it'll be good to know how the fear feels and to go ahead and dance all the same.

Nina George

#52. How would you start to write a poem? How would you put together a series of words for its first line - how would you know which words to choose? When you read a poem, every word seemed so perfect that it had to have been predestined - well, a good poem.

Ashley Hay

#53. How can any one paint who cannot grade colors? How can any one write poetry who has not learnt to hear and see?

Maria Montessori

#54. I don't think of my books as being biographies. I never had any interest in doing a book just to write the life of a great man. I had zero interest in that. My interest is in power. How power works.

Robert Caro

#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. No matter how many red Xs we write on our hands to end slavery, as long as these same hands are clicking on pornographic websites and scrolling through sexual pictures and videos, we are frauds to the core.

David Platt

#57. How much there is I want to do! I always feel that I haven't time to accomplish what I wish. I want to read much. I wanted to write a great deal. I want to make money.

Irving Fisher

#58. However, if you're already inclined to both write and pray, you may as well figure out how they can help each other.

Ed Cyzewski

#59. When I was 4 years old my mother put me into an early music education school. That's where they taught you perfect pitch and harmony and how to write music and all that. At that time, one of the homeworks was to listen to all the sounds and the noise of a day and transfer that into musical notes.

Yoko Ono

#60. To be a good reporter, writing about war, you have to write about the people. It's not about the tanks or the RPGs or military strategy. It's always about the effect war has on civilians, on society, and how it disrupts and destroys lives.

Janine Di Giovanni

#61. I think it's sort of an outrage that companies should have to hire firms to teach the college graduates they employ how to write.

Derek Bok

#62. And I said to him when you learn to read then you learn everything you didnt know before. But when you write you write only what you know allready so patientia Im better off not knowing how to write because the ass is the ass

Umberto Eco

#63. For me, no matter how serious the subject is, when I try to write about it, I have to write about it from a comic point of view. It's just the way it comes out.

Julie Davis

#64. Writers are troubled about finding time to write and writer's block and publicizing books that aren't books yet. They agonize over how to write and what to write and what not to write.

Deb Caletti

#65. I was a little bit perturbed by the whole big grief machine that grew out of 9/11. I knew that I wanted to write about it, but I wasn't sure about how to go about it.

Colum McCann

#66. Seth: I write of love in my novels, write of it well, if my critics and fans are to be believed, but in all of my years at that typewriter, I never found the combination of words that would convey how I felt about you. You were my everything.

Lissa Bryan

#67. I think I subconsciously put myself in these situations where the girlfriend isn't pleased with me. I'm useless as a boyfriend. That's how I managed to write all these songs.

Tom Odell

#68. 'Victorious' for me was a chance to write a song exactly how I was feeling - I was feeling triumphant, I was feeling like I could do anything as long as I've got the people that I love by my side. We're gonna go out and conquer it, and party, and just be awesome.

Brendon Urie

#69. These people that write books on how to succeed and how to think positively make millions because it's something that doesn't occur naturally.

Rush Limbaugh

#70. Capitol Records were very keen for me to write and see how I got on; I think that is what defined my sound. The first session I had was with two young up-and-coming writers, Nick Atkinson and Tom Wilding, and I went into a session a bit nervous because I hadn't written that many songs before.

Shane Filan

#71. I spent 11 years at 'The Daily Show,' and I learned everything there about how to write funny, how to write funny on topic.

David Javerbaum

#72. There is no better way to learn how to write than by writing a novel.

Lawrence Block

#73. I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.

David Antin

#74. It's not how great the ideas are. It's about how you write them, to make them great.

Primadonna Angela

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

Louise Erdrich

#76. How could I ever forget my best friend, the man, who had changed my destiny simply by allowing me to write about him?

Peggy Kopman-Owens

#77. I think it's very, very, very hard to get a book published. I never want to be one of those teachers that say, 'don't do this, ' because how sad would the world be if people didn't create art and write? But, it's not an easy journey being a writer.

Alyson Richman

#78. What will the last syllable of recorded time be, and who will be the one to write it? No matter how long we live, we still wonder when our world will end and how.

Thea Harrison

#79. Write it down and remember that we never gave in, the mind of a child is where the revolution begins, so if the solution has never been to look in yourself, how is it that you expect to find it anywhere else

Immortal Technique

#80. Life is a fairytale if we know how to write the story.

Debasish Mridha

#81. I do not know how old I was when the daydreams became more than that, and I decided to write them down, but by the time I entered high school, I was confident that I would one day be a writer.

Mildred D. Taylor

#82. 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

#83. You told me once
about how they used
to build whole city states
out of poems
how everything you see here
is made out of
the bones of dreams
how having a stiff
drink with lorca meant
you had to write
everything down right away
lately the words just
won't come

John Dorsey

#84. It's still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

Maya Angelou

#85. I'm finding things out about myself as a person - as a writer - as I write, and so are the people who listen to what I do. But they have this additional aspect of how they take the stuff that I do, and so it broadens the work, and it creates this strange connection.

John Darnielle

#86. I think when companies are struggling, they don't want to talk to the press. The guys who write business books aren't interested in it because nobody wants to learn what it's like to be a mess, you want to learn how to be successful. That's slanted the whole thing quite a bit.

Ben Horowitz

#87. 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

#88. You can't learn to write that way - by writing directly for the screen. Wait until you're 30. But in the meantime write 200 short stories. You've got to learn how to write!

Ray Bradbury

#89. 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

#90. Reading is an exercise for learning how to write and vice versa. I have read myself into being a Christian, but I have also written myself into being a Christian.

Stanley Hauerwas

#91. So, I started keeping records. Every day I sat down to write, I would note the time I started, the time I stopped, how many words I wrote, and where I was writing on a spreadsheet

Rachel Aaron

#92. A lot of aspiring writers are all ready to write a novel, but they don't know how to write sentences.

Tom Robbins

#93. It's amazing, if you know what you want to say, how fast it is to write.

Evan Davis

#94. 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

#95. I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, 'Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!'

Brian Eno

#96. I'm trying to figure out how to record at home because I have a tiny house and a seven-year-old and my wife also works at home. So I can't work in the house because she's trying to write, so I pitched a tent in the backyard. I'm literally trying to record in the tent.

Matt Berninger

#97. When I was growing up, my parents asked me what I wanted to do, and I said that I wanted to live in Springfield. They were like, "Well, that's not how it works. There is an actor who play Homer, and someone who writes what Homer says." So, I was like, "Well, I want to write what Homer says."

Jonah Hill

#98. For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence.

Wallace Shawn

#99. Write down the things you wish to remember, and keep those records close. Secured. It's surprising how much you forget as the years go on.

Chloe Neill

#100. But today, something begins to shift. I see that there might be some way I can take the raw material of my life and transform it into something that has order and structure. I can make sense of what, until now, has been senseless.

Dani Shapiro