I Write My Quotes

#1. I always write with my .357 magnum handy. Why? Well, you never know when God may try to interfere.

Edward Abbey

#2. I had hoped to be a poet, and for a long time I tried to write poetry. My first published pieces were poems.

Norman Lock

#3. When I sit down in front of a Windows machine, I can't write; when I sit down in front of my Mac, I can write. So I only use Macs.

Michael Crichton

#4. For me, movies and television are interesting because they are the dominant storytelling form of our time. My first love will always be fiction, and especially novels, but I'm a writer ... I write poetry and essays and criticism and I'd love to write a whole play, and sometimes I even write scripts.

Jess Walter

#5. You know, I like to think my life is kind of like the books I read, only I'm the author. I can write the story I want. The future can be anything I want it to be." He moved his head side to side, considering my words. "That works, as long as your story has a blond stud that fucks like an animal.

Adriana Locke

#6. I can shoot off my big mouth and write my shows and run my shows, and I can recognize how lucky I am because my position is rare and my position is privileged.

Jenji Kohan

#7. As a result of my life on the road and the increasing number of rainy afternoons in cinemas, I began to get the idea that I might write a film.

Jeremy Lloyd

#8. I began to write in the first place because I expected everything to change, and I wanted to have things in writing the way they had been. Just a little things, of course. A little of my little.

William, Saroyan

#9. I was creating commitment devices of my own long before I knew what they were. So when I was a starving post-doc at Columbia University, I was deep in a publish-or-perish phase of my career. I had to write five pages a day towards papers, or I would have to give up five dollars.

Daniel Goldstein

#10. So I'm gonna write it down to scream it out, and I'm never gonna be the same again. Fear is the color you've all exposed, now I gotta get up here and prove the importance of my clothes of my pose. I suppose, again.

Tegan Quin

#11. My favorite way of working is if somebody gives me a piece of music, because I'm quite limited as a player, so it's my favorite thing if somebody gives me a piece of music, and then I can write lyrics and melodies.

Sinead O'Connor

#12. And there, in that phrase, the bitterness leaks again out of my pen. What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could I would write with love, but if I could write with love I would be another man; I would never have lost love.

Graham Greene

#13. I've found the 90-10 rule to be pretty true: 90 percent of what I come up with and write down is kinda 'eh,' and then somehow, someway, 10 percent of it happens to work out really great in my act.

Hasan Minhaj

#14. I used to write bits and pieces of comedy material for various comics that were at the Windmill ... as well as my film job, I was under contract, I was allowed to do that and everything.

Val Guest

#15. I write - and read - for the sake of the story ... My basic test for any story is: 'Would I want to meet these characters and observe these events in real life? Is this story an experience worth living through for its own sake? Is the pleasure of contemplating these characters an end itself?

Ayn Rand

#16. I started to write a series of fantasy novels when I was eleven. I have never taken anything artistic as seriously; since then, writing has felt like an attempt to get back there, to my bedroom, my maps, those races and languages and runes.

Ken Baumann

#17. I can't divorce myself from my childhood. I try to write as much fiction as I possibly can, but there are so many things that are touchstones of my childhood like being on the swim team and playing soccer and the particularities of sports season and environments that make their way into my books.

Jeff Kinney

#18. I'm the type of person who wakes up at 12 AM just to write down a sudden idea that gets in my head. I have a never ending imagination.

B.A. Gabrielle

#19. I sometimes feel that my goal as a novelist would be to write a novel in which the language was so transparent that the reader would forget that language was the medium of understanding. Of course that's not possible, but it's some sort of idealized goal.

Paul Auster

#20. Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks.

Ed Koch

#21. I may have a general broad-based idea of what I want to write about when I sit down to write a book, but I don't have any idea of what it's going to say. I would call my experience of creativity 'inspired by God' to produce certain pieces of information that might be useful to others.

Neale Donald Walsch

#22. Instead of noting down things I'm unlikely to forget, I will write a poem. Even if I have never written one before and even if I never do so again, I will at least know that I once had the courage to put my feelings into words.

Paulo Coelho

#23. I don't card out my screenplays ever. I just have an idea I just sit down and write I don't edit.

Nia Vardalos

#24. When I'm writing a book, I don't have any responsibility to anyone. I'm solitary. I'm writing on my own. I write by hand. And I write every day. I mean, it's part of my daily discipline.

Patti Smith

#25. As an author, I want to write what I'm inspired to write. Not what my readers want me to write. I feel like the books will ultimately be better if my heart is fully into what I'm writing.

Colleen Hoover

#26. Sometimes I just want to write a really intense love scene. But I can't do that in my books for teens, or parents will complain - believe me, I've tried.

Meg Cabot

#27. 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

#28. I'm very rigid about my schedule. I sit down at 8 A.M., and the Internet blocker goes on. My standard time is 120 minutes. I'm a compulsive writer, so it reminds me to stop writing ... If I write more than that, I turn into an ogre for my kids.

Claire Cameron

#29. I can't write to please everyone, but someone, somewhere will be touched if I put my heart into it.

Sara Winters

#30. If you're going to write about war, which my books are about, wars are nasty things. I think it's sort of a cheap, easy way out to write a war story in which no one ultimately dies.

George R R Martin

#31. The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.

Franz Kafka

#32. Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame, if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago.

John Wesley

#33. Sad to say, multi-tasking is beyond me. I read one book at a time all the way through. If I'm reviewing the book, I have to write the review before I start reading any other book. I especially hate it when the phone rings and interrupts my train of thought.

Michael Dirda

#34. I think I write fiction for the opportunity to get beyond the limits of my own life.

Wally Lamb

#35. I realize that I had always in my heart of hearts planned to write a biography of Marie Antoinette.

Antonia Fraser

#36. Every one of my novels could be entitled The Unbearable Lightness of Being or The Joke or Laughable Loves; the titles are interchangeable, they reflect the small number of themes that obsess me, define me, and unfortunately, restrict me. Beyond these themes, I have nothing else to say or write.

Milan Kundera

#37. I watch movies and hang with my family, go shopping, love to cuddle with my dog, Happy, & write songs with my guitar!

Megan Lee

#38. I was kind of an outsider growing up, and I preferred reading to being with other kids. When I was about seven, I started to write my own books. I never thought of myself as wanting to be a writer - I just was one.

Ann Hood

#39. I am in between. Trying to write to be understood by those who matter to me, yet also trying to push my mind with ideas beyond the everyday. It is another borderland I inhabit. Not quite here nor there. On good days I feel I am a bridge. On bad days I just feel alone.

Sergio Troncoso

#40. I write about nuclear tests in Refuge - "The Clan of One-Breasted Women." With so many of the women in my family being diagnosed with breast cancer, mastectomies led to one-breasted women. I believe it is the result of nuclear fallout.

Terry Tempest Williams

#41. I believed God had wired me as a writer for a purpose, and I was squandering that purpose. I finally repented of doing things my way and told God that, in the future, I would only write books that glorified Him. That meant I had to buy back some of my contracts.

Terri Blackstock

#42. Sold my soul to the devil / for nice penmanship. / Now I write real pretty / but I'm starting to regret it.

Dan Mangan

#43. I would be pleased if someone would invent a pill to remove my impatience, moodiness, and occasional bursts of anger. But if they did, I wouldn't be able to write my novels or paint.

Orhan Pamuk

#44. One thing that's paramount in my life is that I am alone. I'm a loner. And yet I have many friends and I don't feel lonely. And I even like my own company. But when I'm alone, it's to read or write. I'm in my thoughts. Mostly I'm learning.

Agnes Denes

#45. I don't fully understand my wife's emotions - and I'm supposed to write an excellent female character and unravel the secret of women?

Evan Goldberg

#46. I just let the songs tell me what to do - they are my guides, and they are the boss. So I am subservient to the songs, and I let them tell me what to do. I don't judge them; I just write whatever comes to me.

Valerie June

#47. 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

#48. I've always wanted to write comic books, my earliest memories are of waiting for Dad to come home from work, and, secreted in his lawyer's leather briefcase, would be comics from the store.

Arvind Ethan David

#49. I said: 'I'm throwing in my job, and I'm going to write a book.' Everyone thought: 'She's off her trolley,' and it was quite crazy, really. I'm just lucky that it came off.

Sara Sheridan

#50. I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.

Anne Lamott

#51. When I write fiction, I struggle to decide the fate of two people created by my mind and spend countless hours to give them a happy ending. God, the Almighty has created infinite human beings till date and runs all our lives with such ease. He is the BEST WRITER of all.

Shahla Khan

#52. I tend to write songs fast, so the process usually only lasts around 30 minutes. In the studio is where I really can artistically breathe, and let my ideas flow.

Alan Cohen

#53. I was dressed up as a witch for Halloween, and wanted to write a story about my black cat before I went out trick-or-treating. I think it went out with the trash the next day.

Robin Hobb

#54. Any time I sit down at my laptop to write and I'm feeling lazy, or that I can't be bothered, or if I'm generally just lacking inspiration, I sit there and remember life with my ex-wife, and the words flow from my fingertips.

Shane K.P. O'Neill

#55. I wanted to write about relationships. But I didn't feel I had the experience to sing about them in a deep way. Studying psychology helped me out in terms of my understanding. I still look through my old textbooks when I'm in need of inspiration.

Natasha Bedingfield

#56. Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

#57. I'm a self-taught musician so how I read music is kind of very weak and I kind of read my own version of tablature, I write my own crappy reminders on what I'm playing.

Jason Mraz

#58. I just write songs from the heart, and you never know who'll like the songs. I try to make sure that I don't allow anybody's expectation to weigh on me. I have my own expectation of life. I believe in letting people be free.

Ester Dean

#59. I don't have time to sit up and write songs all day. Maybe one day when my kids get older.

Faith Evans

#60. I could go off into the wilderness and write fantasy novels for the rest of my life and probably be happy; but I always want to challenge myself.

Felicia Day

#61. I write only for my shadow which is cast on the wall in front of the light. I must introduce myself to it.

Sadegh Hedayat

#62. When I read my writing, am amazed by what I have captured in a given moments.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#63. I'm such a slow writer I have no need for anything as fast as a word processor. I don't need anything so snappy. I write so slowly that I could write in my own blood without hurting myself.

Fran Lebowitz

#64. The voices in my head wouldn't shut up, so I let them write their story.

Shandy L. Kurth

#65. As for my next book, I won't write it till it has grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.

Virginia Woolf

#66. Greta, Greta, he whispered, eyes shut in rapture, on thy breast I write my Edda, at thy feet I lay the keys of Niflheim, by thy leave alone, I live, and breathe, and die.

Catherynne M Valente

#67. I write stories, that I would enjoy reading and scenarios that have never been done before. I hope my fans enjoy the ride-Erik Dean.

Erik Dean

#68. I used to hang out with grandfather all the time because he used to pick me up from school sometimes, or drive me to my mother's, so I'd be with my grandfather a lot. I used to watch him write his sermons.

Chris Rock

#69. I'm married to an American, so I guess that has changed my perspective on the subjects I can write about.

Laurie Graham

#70. I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.

Sylvia Plath

#71. When I write my music I see all the rivers flowing ... sensual, spiritual, religious, animal, intellectual ...

Laura Nyro

#72. All I wanted to do was write - at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn't need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children.

Paul Auster

#73. Char me the trunk of a redwood tree. Give me pages of white chalk cliffs to write upon. Magnify me thousands of times, and replace my trifling immodesties with a titanic megalomania - then might I write largely enough for our subjects.

Charles Fort

#74. I read a lot of books. Here are the books I'm using for my 9/11 project. [Wright gestures to three six-foot-long shelves of books.] As I read them I highlight certain passages. Then I have an assistant write down each quote on an index card and note where it came from.

Lawrence Wright

#75. I wanted to be involved with literature. I certainly wasn't going to be able to write for a living, and I didn't have enough confidence in my talent to think that I should be just doing that. Publishing seemed like fun to me - to be involved with writers. And it did turn out to be.

Jonathan Galassi

#76. Welcome to my world! I've been through it all, and I often pinch myself to believe my luck. I design jewlery, create cosmetics, perform comedy, act, lecture, write books, travel, have a fabulous daughter, and a phenomenal grandson-and I feel I'm the luckiest woman on the planet.

Joan Rivers

#77. I don't even do anything in real life. I just sit in my studio and write, I call my friends, I watch television. I don't do anything.

Lana Del Rey

#78. I'm really bad at describing my books. Journalists like to have things like "It's The Terminator Meets the Seven Dwarfs." And I can't do that with my books. If I could, I probably wouldn't write them.

Charles De Lint

#79. All these interviews I'm doing - this is the kind of stuff that I was dreaming about doing when I was younger. I was praying for people to want to write about me. I wanted people to hear my music. I wanted to perform. I wanted to be on billboards.

Shameik Moore

#80. My first real writing job was at 'Rolling Stone,' so I wrote about rock-and-roll and politics and the like. At the time, I really didn't know what I wanted to write, and I did a bunch of investigative journalism.

Tim Cahill

#81. When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.

John Updike

#82. Some of my affectionate envious friends say, "You write too much." Maybe, I answer. But as long as the best of your little is worse than the worst of my much, I will keep on doing so.

Juan Ramon Jimenez

#83. ... my life has been a remarkable one. Maybe one day someone will write a book about me ... "
"I've never much cared for horror stories.

Anthony Horowitz

#84. My name is Jarrett Krosoczka, and I write and illustrate books for children for a living. So I use my imagination as my full-time job.

Jarrett J. Krosoczka

#85. I write what the Holy Spirit put on my mind.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#86. I can play the guitar and the keys and the drums. I'm not brilliant at any of them. I can sing too. Some of my friends are proper musicians but I'm a song-writer. I write songs.

Jim Sturgess

#87. Usually I get up early every morning and from 6:00 to 10:00 I write. The rest of the time I study and prepare my work or I do other things. But four hours a day are exclusively devoted to writing.

Elie Wiesel

#88. As long as you give my friend Jonah Lehrer a free pizza, I'll write a song about your restaurant.

Bob Dylan

#89. I don't need music to write, but sometimes I put music on. I don't need special clothes or even my own equipment.

Jane Lindskold

#90. What I'd really like to write is a romantic comedy. This is my favorite kind of movie. I feel almost embarrassed revealing this, because the genre has been so degraded in the past twenty years that saying you like romantic comedies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity.

Mindy Kaling

#91. I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week.

Chaim Potok

#92. When I write, my brain moves faster than my hands so I'm always trying to picture things.

John Lydon

#93. Any of the rewards or accolades or any of that are very nice and everything but the music is what saves me. And it did. I would write my way out of any kind of depressing period.

Randy Houser

#94. I like being able to donate my comedy to charity. I'm not a billionaire, and I can't write checks.

Judy Gold

#95. I am thankful for a new day, to live, to love, to talk, to smile, to laugh to walk, to dream, to share, to write, to hope, to pray, to praise God and to fulfill my purpose of life.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#96. I think I'm writing for an intelligent stranger - you know, in my mind I can't remember who coined that phrase first. I don't want to write anything that makes me cringe, first of all. I cringe a lot - mostly when I hear popular music.

Jason Isbell

#97. You know, I've always wrote my best stuff when it takes me hardly any time at all. Actually I wrote ... this is actually a really funny story ... 'Ghost Of Vincent Price', I've been wanting to write a song about Vincent Price coz he's one of my favorite characters of all time.

Wednesday 13

#98. The smartest thing I did in law school: asking my future wife to go out dancing with me. The smartest thing I did when practicing law: quitting. The smartest thing I've done in writing: following my own head and writing what I wanted to write, and nothing but.

Ben Fountain

#99. My job is art curator, not artist. All I have ever wanted to do is immerse myself in art, to enjoy it, to learn about it, to write about it, to talk to others about it.

Hans Ulrich Obrist

#100. I figure I write for people who are intelligent enough to do some labor. Lazy readers are not my ideal readers.

Rigoberto Gonzalez