Top 100 The Writing Quotes
#1. The writing part of my life never changes, because that's just when the inspiration comes.
Randy Owen
#2. I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation.
Derek Walcott
#3. What one gains in technique can lead to deforestation in the writing that is both good and bad. Keep the energy and the willingness to proceed stupidly.
Nancy Zafris
#4. I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it.
Alice Englert
#5. I'm awake as soon as the sun crests the eastern hills. I guess I'm motivated because I love just about everything about my life - the writing, the many critters, the art, and all the rest.
Linda Lael Miller
#6. I got the writing bug in the fourth grade when a poem of mine was published in the school newspaper. Music criticism came a little later, when I was in high school.
Ann Powers
#7. I was fascinated with the writing process and seeing the evolution of a sketch and how it would change up to the minute before it went on the air.
Trevor Moore
#8. The point is the 'me' that you see before you is not the 'me' in my private little space, shape-shifting into the writing role, nor is it the 'me' that works with the actors. Here, at the end of the film doing interviews, I feel like I'm in disguise.
Julia Leigh
#9. My only close-to-game-plan is to follow good writing. If the writing is in TV or if it's in theater or in film, that's it. It doesn't really matter what the medium is.
Adam Driver
#10. I strive for what you do find in Shakespeare's work - that there is a definite humanity and a definite character behind the writing in the sonnets, and it's very real because it's so deeply personal. I try to aspire to that in what I do.
Rufus Wainwright
#11. No no there wasn't any planned 14th season, we all saw the writing on the wall. The ratings had been going down and so fourth, that curve goes on every show and in everybody's life.
Larry Hagman
#12. Flora had decided that this was part of the reason her parents had divorced. Not the noise of the writing, but the writing itself. Specifically, the writing of romance. Flora
Kate DiCamillo
#13. Imagination plays too important a role in the writing of history, and what is imagination but the projection of the author's personality.
Pieter Geyl
#14. Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing, the rest will follow.
Jane Yolen
#15. I'm very involved in the writing on every level.
Fran Drescher
#16. I'm still auditioning and doing other movie parts, but I really like the developing and the writing. You have more control over your destiny.
Alex Borstein
#17. Somebody told me I should try writing. Actually, a lot of people tried to get me to try writing, long before I thought I was 'the writing type'.
Karen Walton
#18. The writing process, it's too mysterious to try and describe.
Mick Jones
#19. The interesting part about the writing process is that you can never see all the way to the end, not if something is happening over the course of a year and a half, or two years.
Tom Perrotta
#20. Tone is always such an important thing, and that's achieved through a multitude of people. It comes through the writing, it comes through the way it's shot, and it comes through the production design and the sound design.
Harry Treadaway
#21. It took years of keeping journals to trust a simple fact: like life in transit, the writing inside is often fragmented, messy.
Alexandra Johnson
#22. I try to do as little as possible without looking like an idiot. Research is fun and easy. Writing is hard. So I try not to let the research become an excuse to not do the writing part.
Zachary Lazar
#23. The quality of the writing, really. Simple as that. Beautiful words. It's very nice as a singer to do great songs, which have wonderful lyrics and strong feelings underneath the song.
Bryan Ferry
#24. When the stories come easily and the writing process doesn't feel laboring, that's usually a good sign for me.
David E. Kelley
#25. When I'm fishing, I feel guilty that I'm not writing, and when I'm writing, I feel guilty that I'm not fishing. But when push comes to shove, I'll always take the writing.
Raymond Carver
#26. The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.
James Fenton
#27. For my little dog, Pip, who joined our family during the writing of
this story. Thanks for rescuing me.
Jackie Braun
#28. In the writing of memoirs, as in the production of shows, too much caution causes the audience to nod and think of other channels.
Gerald Clarke
#29. In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful ... You can only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.
Doris Lessing
#30. The - writing is a kind of act of aggression, and a person who is not aggressive in his normal, may I say, intercourse with humanity might well be an aggressive writer.
John Updike
#31. He is like the fox, who effaces his tracks in the sand with his tail.
{Describing the writing style of famous mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss}
Niels Henrik Abel
#32. 'Purple Plumeria' I dithered over for months and then wrote the whole thing between the beginning of July and end of August. The dithering and procrastination time was three times the writing times.
Lauren Willig
#33. I've been interested in the writing/directing thing and really fell into acting by complete accident.
Domhnall Gleeson
#34. If any accolades come in the writing of this story, all praise will be His, all Glory will rightly go to Him. If He will allow me to share some part in this, I am truly humbled.
Lynn Dove
#35. The thing that usually gets me through the writing is that my feelings of wretched inadequacy are irregularly punctuated by brief flashes of omnipotence.
James L. Brooks
#36. The holy spirit means the invisible power of Jehovah, holy because he is holy. This power of Jehovah operated upon the minds of honest men who loved and who were devoted to righteousness, directing them in the writing of the Bible.
Joseph Franklin Rutherford
#37. I envy certain writers, because there are writers who do go into a kind of different zone, where the writing isn't controlled anymore.
Errol Morris
#38. The beauty of 'The Hunger Games' and also 'Game of Thrones,' in fairness, both projects have really complex, three-dimensional, contradictory, strong women ... The writing of female characters is extraordinary and equal to the men.
Natalie Dormer
#39. 'The Sopranos' all came down to the writing. I wouldn't have been on for as long as I was if the writing weren't so good.
James Gandolfini
#40. There are very few solid family films. A lot of the writing is awful.
Chevy Chase
#41. The writing of a poem is, for me, in the first place, an almost total act of abandon leading to discovery leading to recognition.
Marvin Bell
#42. Fantasy is my genre and my home in the writing world. I consider it the biggest writing room in all literature, where there are literally no boundaries at all.
Robin Hobb
#43. We want to keep believing in our ideas even when the writing is on the wall.
Eric Ries
#45. I was in enough to get along with people. I was never socially inarticulate. Not a loner. And that saved my life, saved my sanity. That and the writing. But to this day I distrust anybody who thought school was a good time. Anybody.
Stephen King
#46. Granted, there is always much that is hidden, and we must not forget that the writing of history - however dryly it is done and however sincere the desire for objectivity - remains literature. History's third dimension is always fiction
Hermann Hesse
#47. I think the writing on the wall is definitely there this year that this is probably our last year.
Michael Shanks
#49. It depends on the way you shoot it. It's something I don't really control. The main goal is to make a funny movie, but then I let my mind go. I get lost sometimes in the writing, trying to find some special zones. That's the excitement of making a movie.
Quentin Dupieux
#50. If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.
Tennessee Williams
#51. I found myself in network always trying to play catch up because once things get going there's no time to fix this and that. And also the writing, it was more inclined to be by committee in network which drowns out the purity and the voice of the show.
Dennis Quaid
#52. The twisted circumstances under which we live is grist for the writing mill, the loving, hating and discovering, finding new handles for old pitchers ...
Alice Childress
#53. Another drink, another sentence, and the writing continues on ...
Dennis R. Miller
#54. The literature of the Spanish Civil War is also important to me. Above all George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" as well as the writing of John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway. They worked on a film together in Spain during that war, which ended their friendship.
George Packer
#55. And if all the trees on earth were pens and the ocean [were ink], with seven
oceans behind it to add to its [supply], yet would not the words of Allah be
exhausted [in the writing]: for Allah is Exalted in Power, full of Wisdom.
Anonymous
#56. Especially in the last 10 years, the writing on animated shows has jumped by leaps and bounds.
Will Friedle
#57. My father read poetry to me, encouraged me to memorize poems. But the writing of it was quite a different thing.
C. K. Williams
#58. The writing life is one long, never-ending search for narrative. Well, it's not even a conscious searching. It happens even while you're busy buying groceries and when you're fast asleep. It's a curse.
Miriam Toews
#59. You may ask, why not simply call this literature Christian? Unfortunately, the word Christian is no longer reliable. It has come to mean anyone with a golden heart. And a golden heart would be a positive interference in the writing of fiction.
Flannery O'Connor
#60. Write a lot and don't think about publishing - just the writing.
Jeffrey Brown
#61. All through June the writing course had stretched before me like a bright, safe bridge over the dull gulf of summer. Now I saw it totter and dissolve, and a body in a white blouse and green skirt plummet into the gap.
Sylvia Plath
#62. the writing process behind The Tilted World.
Tom Franklin
#63. The writing is definitely on the wall and no matter how pretty the ink looks, it will still bleed through and stain the layers beneath permanently.
K. Bromberg
#64. Louis Pasteur said, 'Chance favors the prepared mind.' If you're really engaged in the writing, you'll work yourself out of whatever jam you find yourself in.
Michael Chabon
#65. We collaborate on everything. I'm involved in the writing and pre-production. There's a whole bunch of people who keep in touch at every step about everything.
Jay Roach
#66. There's this whole thing of being two people. You are the person you want to be - the writer - and then there's this weird other life of going on tour and talking about the writing. And that really is weird.
Michelle Paver
#67. In 'Snow White and the Hunstman,' when we see them in the Dark Forest, you're allowed a lot of freedom to be able to cutaway to, for instance, the prince. That B and C story stuff helps the writing process, even though it makes it a more complicated movie.
Evan Daugherty
#68. The reader's ear must adjust down from loud life to the subtle, imaginary sounds of the written word. An ordinary reader picking up a book can't yet hear a thing; it will take half an hour to pick up the writing's modulations, its ups and downs and louds and softs.
Annie Dillard
#69. The writing is what gives me the joy, especially editing myself for the page, and getting something ready to show to the editors, and then to have a first draft and get it back and work to fix it, I love reworking, I love editing, love love love revision, revision, revision, revision.
George Carlin
#70. In the writing phase, normally I try not to envisage any particular actors because I like to let the characters sort of reveal themselves in that process.
David Ayer
#71. Still, on 'Friends', we had some guest-stars who were less than spectacular, not the stunt-casting, but just regular guest-stars, and they weren't particularly great actors, but the material was so good that they scored. It's the writing.
Matt LeBlanc
#72. The live show allows me to transcend myself, because it's not about me anymore. The writing process is very much about me but then the live show is not. They feel really different.
Fernando Torres
#73. When you're not writing, you're not doing anything else either because everything you do goes into the writing.
Linn Ullmann
#74. This means I must pay close attention to the writing, but equally so to the scientific background - which sometimes means doing fairly involved calculations.
Stanley Schmidt
#75. The great thing about dealing with people about whom we have historical resources, is that if the writing needs work, there's everywhere to go to enrich it.
Colin Firth
#76. I have considered the directing, actually. Not so much the writing. That is not really interesting, but the directing is really interesting to me.
Timothy Omundson
#77. Directing is such a crucial part of the writing process; you start directing and you see what does not work. "Oh, God, what was I thinking?" and then you can rearrange it.
Conor McPherson
#78. I've always loved the writing of Aaron Sorkin. He cleverly intersperses big issues alongside personal relationships.
Rupert Evans
#79. What's so exciting and terrifying about the writing process is that it really is an act of exploration and discovery. With all of us, not just writers, there is a sort of knowledge of the other. We have a lot more in common than we realize, and I think writing is really a sustained act of empathy.
Andre Dubus
#80. My first TV job was on an episode of 'Hannah Montana' ... Since then, I've been fortunate to end up on shows that are just such a high quality, where the writing and material is incredible.
Alison Brie
#81. Whether you're conducting phone interviews or simply need to hear yourself think, privacy is an extremely important variable in the writing life.
Sage Cohen
#82. The real violence is committed in the writing of history, the records of the legal system, the reporting of news, through the manipulation of social contracts, and the control of information.
Bryant H. McGill
#83. What is difficult is the promotion, balancing the public side of a writer's life with the writing. I think that's something a lot of writers are having to face. Writers have become much more public now.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#84. I write until the first draft is finished, and then I feel that I can get out. But, during the time of the writing of the first draft, I don't go out. I'm just locked away, writing. It's a time of meditation, of going into the story.
Isabel Allende
#85. My dad was Chinese-American and very conservative when it came to his family's futures. He said if I wanted to have a secure job, I should go into science. So I did what Dad said and went to medical school, but the writing bug never left me.
Tess Gerritsen
#86. There is nothing more valuable in the writing process than a friend to hold you accountable to your own potential.
J.R. Young
#87. I can't write a novel without first really doing reporting. I don't even call it research; it's reporting. That process is very important to the granularity of my writing. I have to know what the reality is so I can be more convincing in the writing.
Lorraine Adams
#88. Most producers I've known were writers first, and writing is a vital part of any game show. You could easily argue that the writing is the key ingredient that makes 'Jeopardy!' so great.
Randy West
#89. I'd be happy to do Star Trek again, if the writing was right.
Stephen Collins
#90. I think the beauty of the writing of 'Game of Thrones' is not that the characters are fearless; it's how they overcome their fear, you know?
Natalie Dormer
#91. Where does a character come from? Because a character, at the end of the day, a character will be the combination of the writing of the character, the voicing of the character, the personality of the character, and what the character looks like.
Brian Henson
#92. Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.
Alan Bennett
#93. Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile ... a stain upon the silence.
Samuel Beckett
#94. I can't do a film if I don't start with the writing.
Neil Jordan
#95. The writing of You've Got a Friend was one of the most incredible experiences because it was mostly inspiration. It just came to me almost as we hear it.
Carole King
#96. You know, I had the music baskets and the writing basket. And I had the acting. And those eggs just hatched first, and the others were slow to incubate.
Laura Bell Bundy
#97. The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.
Mary Roberts Rinehart
#98. All my children inspire me in life, and that always comes out in the writing.
Paul Weller
#99. Exaggeration in every sense is as essential to newspaper writing as it is to the writing of plays: for the point is to make as much as possible of every occurrence. So that all newspaper writers are, for the sake of their trade, alarmists: this is their way of making themselves interesting.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#100. There is the great creative part of it. The writing is the best part.
Cynthia Weil
