I Write Quotes

#1. I'm going to write about them as I took them -- with a smile.

Jack Black

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

Edward Abbey

#3. 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

#4. I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like What I'm Going to be If I Grow Up

Lenny Bruce

#5. I write plays instinctively. I don't like writing movie scripts.

Jesse Eisenberg

#6. If you can write a character who is attractive but morally reprehensible, then you've got a character. It's got to feel like people I know and it doesn't just become a bag of tricks.

Jez Butterworth

#7. I've never wanted to live in a ghetto or write in a ghetto. I want to write about a world that reflects the one most people live in. Gay people are just one aspect of that.

Val McDermid

#8. 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

#9. I write because you exist.

Michael Faudet

#10. I do play all the characters, when I write them, one after another. If they actually had to film me, the only one I could play would be Samwell Tarly or Hot Pie.

George R R Martin

#11. The military is a very cool world to write about. I went down to Ft. Benning, Ga., for military training, and I learned a lot about soldiers and officers and why they joined up and what their life has been like.

David Baldacci

#12. 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

#13. Madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does.

Virginia Woolf

#14. (The new boyfriend) knows I write every day for hours but has no idea that all I'm writing about is me. It seems wiser to let him think I'm an aspiring novelist instead of just an alcoholic with a year of sobriety who spends eight hours a day writing about the other 16.

Augusten Burroughs

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. If I don't write it, who will? No one; at least not the way I would because the idea is uniquely mine.

Tanika L. Smith

#19. I try to write about a woman finding her self-respect, valuing herself, and liking herself again. But what one desperately wants now is to write a proper novel.

Kate O'Mara

#20. 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

#21. In real life, I'm such a dorky, happy person. I express myself in three ways: I talk a lot, I write songs and I get tattoos.

Christina Perri

#22. It would be an egregious mistake to ever refer to me in the same breath as most of the people I write about.

Anthony Bourdain

#23. Sometimes I write drunk and revise sober, and sometimes I write sober and revise drunk. But you have to have both elements in creation - the Apollonian and the Dionysian, or spontaneity and restraint, emotion and discipline.

Peter De Vries

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. I wanted to badly to be vulnerable over a burger, beer, and bags of free books we find on some stranger's porch. You wanted badly to be touched some thousand miles away and never found the time to write me back.

Darnell Lamont Walker

#27. When I set out to write crime fiction, I didn't think to myself, 'I'm going to model myself on Agatha Christie' or 'I am going to be a crime writer in the Christie tradition'.

Sophie Hannah

#28. I don't care what you write man, just make sure you make us sound sexy. Say that we looked like we'd just come from the beach and that our bodies were glistening. Say we got no hair on our chests. Anything so the girls will like us.

Nathan Followill

#29. I'm also always thinking about the score as a recording, as opposed to a performance that can be recreated in a live environment. Some of what I write could of course be played in a concert hall, but for the needs of a film I don't consider that.

Geoff Zanelli

#30. I think a writer should always be surprised; and the more I write, the more it seems that the language itself, when explored with humility, is always deeper and more accurate than what the author thought he had in mind.

Ciaran Carson

#31. I would love to write a mystery - a romantic, funny mystery.

Cecelia Ahern

#32. 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

#33. I'd like to write a history, maybe of the Reformation.

Jane Haddam

#34. It has taken me years of struggle, hard work, and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.

Isadora Duncan

#35. 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

#36. If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say, 'This poet lies; Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'

William Shakespeare

#37. 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

#38. 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

#39. 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

#40. I'm very serious about what I write and who I allow to produce the music, because I want to make sure it's a true album, and not just something pushed out there to create hype and more fame for myself.

Alyson Stoner

#41. 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

#42. 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

#43. 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

#44. I'd worked for, during one period, for a PR firm, and for a while Rock Hudson was a client of ours, so I knew him well, and I knew when he had AIDS, that he had AIDS, but I would not write about that.

Robert Osborne

#45. 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

#46. I think all characters are facets of the writer. In a way, they have to be if you're going to write them convincingly.

Ruth Ozeki

#47. I'm not a good writer. It takes me a long time to get there. I write and then rewrite and revise and do it over and over until I'm satisfied.

M.J. Rose

#48. 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

#49. 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

#50. 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

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

C.S. Woolley

#52. [I]t is the writer's duty to write fiction which promotes virtue, the good, the beautiful, and above all, the true ... It is the writer's duty to hate injustice, to defy the powerful, and to speak for the voiceless. To be ... the severest critics of our own societies.

Edward Abbey

#53. I like to escape; I like to write when I go on a walk - I'm kind of very fairy that way. I get inspired by the wind. Or when I daydream, that's when I write.

Imelda May

#54. It's very common for people to recommend something to me because they're going on what I've already written, when, what really is the case, is that you want to write about something you haven't written about, in ways that you haven't done before.

Tom Stoppard

#55. People talk differently. You can say some things some places you can't say in other places. But me as a film maker, no words are ever going to be off limits in something I write. As long as people use the words, I'm going to report that.

Dax Shepard

#56. 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

#57. I knew I had to write about Canada. I just could not find in literature any examples of the immigrant experience that I've had.

Shyam Selvadurai

#58. I've heard Stephen King say that when you write a novel you end up revealing everything about yourself.

Ernest Cline

#59. TV's not the problem, and I'm tired of it being posed as this antithesis to creativity and productivity. If TV's getting in your way of writing a book, then you don't want to write a book bad enough.

Andrea Seigel

#60. I have always felt that the truth is prophetic, and that if you describe precisely what you see and give it life with your imagination, then what you write ought to have lasting value, no matter what the mood of your prose.

Paul Theroux

#61. And I offer this book with the heartiest sentiments to all the jolly people who hate what I write, and regard it (very justly, for all I know), as a piece of poor clowning or a single tiresome joke.

G.K. Chesterton

#62. 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

#63. You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books? I say 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?

Kurt Vonnegut

#64. 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

#65. I like to let the story flesh itself out, and usually, the characters make their own decisions as things get under way. Dialogue especially seems to write itself once I'm familiar with the characters and their backgrounds.

Victoria Aveyard

#66. I can't write another breakup record. That would be a real cliche.

Adele

#67. I suggest somewhere that anyone who wishes to write and has no aptitude for it would be better off making shoes for ladies and boots for men.

Marquis De Sade

#68. I used to think, 'I'm going to write.' I knew that from quite early on, but I also thought, 'Maybe I'll be an explorer or a spy,' and it all came from books.

Lisa Tuttle

#69. I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.

Zadie Smith

#70. All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. It's much more relaxing to actually write.

Fran Lebowitz

#71. I don't write about what I know: I write in order to find out what I know.

Patricia Hampl

#72. I personally believe that I was ... a previous life or something ... a previous reincarnation, a bard of some sort, because most of the things I write about are descriptions of places I've never been to.

Marc Bolan

#73. 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

#74. I like to write about people who are real and likeable. I like to write about people who tell their stories in that close and intimate voice we use with best friends. I love the closeness and honesty and vulnerability that come from characters who can talk that way.

Katherine Center

#75. 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

#76. I miss you so much. Maybe if I say your name over and over again, it will eventually feel wrong to me. Like a word you write too many times suddenly doesn't look right anymore. I will try that.

Kate McGahan

#77. I write and rewrite and rewrite and write and like to turn in what I think is finished work.

Gay Talese

#78. 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

#79. You know what talent is? The curse of expectation. As a kid you have to deal with that, beat it somehow. If you can write, you think God put you on earth to blow Shakespeare away. Or if you can paint, maybe you think
I did
that God put you on earth to blow your father away.

Stephen King

#80. If people would write exactly what I wanted to read I wouldn't feel so compelled to write myself.

Laurell K. Hamilton

#81. 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.

#82. I like writing for other people. I love it. It's great because you write it and then you hand it off to someone else. But in terms of directing, anything I direct will be something I've written or re-written. I'm in no crazy rush to direct.

Nicholas Stoller

#83. I didn't want to be a big record mogul and all that stuff. I just wanted to write songs and make people laugh.

Berry Gordy

#84. I wanted to write a story about a future where everyone has a secret identity, in part because the Internet no longer exists.

Brian K. Vaughan

#85. 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

#86. 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

#87. But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose, I can only do what I am given, and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry - still.

Ian Hamilton Finlay

#88. 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

#89. I thought of God as being able to talk big and write *very* small.

John Hersey

#90. I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation.

Tom Stoppard

#91. When I get sent manuscripts from aspiring poets, I do one of two things: if there is no stamped self-addressed envelope, I throw it into the bin.-If there is, I write and tell them to f**k off.

Philip Larkin

#92. Because I've lived a risky and unconventional life, I don't often struggle for subjects to write about.

Poe Ballantine

#93. I have always been in a condition in which I cannot not write.

Barbara Tuchman

#94. I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.

Mark Twain

#95. I have offices all over the place and I avoid work everywhere. I don't like to write - I like to be finished.

Richard Price

#96. But I can also write in crappy motel rooms, while standing in line, or sitting in the dentist's chair.

Augusten Burroughs

#97. 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

#98. I want to write poems which are very emotional, but I would have some hesitation in saying I want to write poems which are sentimental.

Andrew Motion

#99. I don't care what I do - act, stand-up, write, direct - it doesn't matter as long as I'm being creative and it's good work.

Jeff Garlin

#100. I had wanted to write English crime novels based on the American hard-boiled style, and for the first two novels about Brixton, the critics didn't actually know I was Irish.

Ken Bruen