What Should I Write Quotes

#1. It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, "What should I write at the age of sixty-four," but never, "What should I write in 1940.

W. H. Auden

#2. A match as a pen
Blood on the floor as ink
The forgotten gauze cover as paper
But what should I write?
I might just manage my address
This ink is strange; it clots
I write you from a prison
in Greece

Alexanderos Panagoulis

#3. I write. This is what I do. My job is to sit down with my vocabulary, select words, and decide what order they should be placed in an attempt to keep someone's attention and perhaps provide them with a laugh or two along the way.

Alan Zweibel

#4. This is what I think: If you had the nerve to live what you lived, you should have the nerve to write it.

Jerry Stahl

#5. I myself have never called what I write anti-poetry. I also think that my poetry should not be only known as the poetry of Ernesto Cardenal but rather as Nicaraguan poetry.

Ernesto Cardenal

#6. I never write from concept. The beat is the beginning, and then I fill in the rest of the song into what it should be.

Wiz Khalifa

#7. I think all Internet comments should be disengaged. But I kind of live and die by it. It's completely irresistible. It's not like comedy. When I do a podcast or write an episode of TV, I have no feedback for that. That's the only way you know what you're doing is good or bad.

Harris Wittels

#8. I have no sense of what I should or shouldn't talk about. I just blather. Which is why it's fun to write 'Gossip Girl.' I do tend to just talk about anything.

Cecily Von Ziegesar

#9. Rather, I think one should write, as nearly as possible, as if he were the first person on earth and was humbly and sincerly putting on paper that which he saw and experienced and loved and lost; what his passing thoughts were and his sorrows and desires.

Jack Kerouac

#10. I've had a lot of girls reach out to me about struggling with body image. I've only been able to write back to a few of them, but I've been able to write and have correspondence with a few of them and really talk about what I think they should do or if I think they should ask for help.

Troian Bellisario

#11. Yes, one uses what one knows, but autobiography means something else. I should never be able to write a real autobiography; I always end by falsifying and fictionalizing - I'm a liar, in fact. That means I'm a novelist, after all. I write about what I know.

Alberto Moravia

#12. I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.

Maurice Sendak

#13. When people start to write articles about what might be wrong with the 'Today' show you know where you should point the finger, point it at me because I have been there the longest. And it's my responsibility.

Matt Lauer

#14. I hardly trust myself to write about him. I do not know what I should write about him.

Ahdaf Soueif

#15. An idea that will translate really well musically should work visually. I try to write music that you can feel if you were to close your eyes you can see what I am talking about.

Ne-Yo

#16. This is the life I live, and this is the stuff I experience. And like any good writer, I should just write about what goes in my life and what goes on around me. So that's what I chose to do.

Sune Rose Wagner

#17. People say, "You should write lyrics" and I say I'm quite happy not to, because I like being part of that process where you write your version of what someone else's lyrics are saying to you, and that enjoyment has never changed.

Elton John

#18. Before I published any of my own stories, I read a great many stories by people as passionate about writing as I was, and I learned something from everyone I read
something most important what I should not try to write.

Dorothy Allison

#19. What's more interesting are the dynamics between people that involve hypocrisy or ignoring each other. That's what I want to write about. I like to make people uncomfortable because it's something we should be uncomfortable about.

George Pelecanos

#20. You are the best of us. We are the best of you. What becomes of us will, inevitably, become of you. That is why you should care. That is why I write.
I end this chapter, then, with broken silence, broken vows, broken trust. Our secrets are yours now; I pray you use them well.

Donna Boyd

#21. Some people get offended with what I write. In their own little pathetic world, they truly believe I should apologize for being a writer.

Daniel Marques

#22. I tell people you should write what you love to read because that's where your passion is.

Brad Thor

#23. If I wanted to be in movies, I'd have gone into scriptwriting: the fact that I write novels should be a big hint about what I prefer to do!

Charles Stross

#24. I know what you're thinking - that anybody with proper sensitive feelings would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don't see why proper feelings should prevent me from doing my proper job.

Dorothy L. Sayers

#25. I write scripts in storyboard fashion using stick figures, and thought balloons and word balloons and captions. Then I'll write descriptions of what scenes should look like and turn it over to the artist.

Harvey Pekar

#26. After the success of 'August,' there were people saying I should change my life. And maybe I should have bought a yacht and traveled the world instead of returning to Steppenwolf to act in and write plays. But I'm from the Midwest, and that's what we do: We go back to work.

Tracy Letts

#27. Life is a very orderly thing, but in fiction there is a huge liberation and freedom. I can do what I like. There's nothing that says I can't write a page of full stops. There is no 'should' involved, although you wouldn't know that from literary reviews and critics.

Kate Atkinson

#28. What seems beautiful to me, what I should like to write, is a book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external, which would be held together by the strength of its style, just as the earth, suspended in the void, depends on nothing external for its support.

Gustave Flaubert

#29. I just write books, and I do it without any notion of what I should do or shouldn't do.

Jasper Fforde

#30. I have architects write to me and ask me: How do you - and what do you do to - design the magic thing? I answer that very carefully. It's not necessarily about what you do, but the clients you do it for. You should write to Target, not me.

Michael Graves

#31. If someone writes a great story, people praise the author, not the pen. People don't say, 'Oh what an incredible pen ... where can I get a pen like this so I can write great stories?' Well, I am just a pen in the hands of the Lord. He is the author. All praise should go to him.

Keith Green

#32. I was thinking what I usually think about when I write: what the next word should be, whether my character should be an emu farmer or a wallaby farmer, the searing pain in my right temple.

Kevin Moffett

#33. I always tell students that writing a poem and publishing it are two quite separate things, and you should write what you have to write, and if you're afraid it's going to upset someone, don't publish it.

Wendy Cope

#34. What qualified me to write about Israel was that I wanted to; it took no time to convince myself. The only reservation I had was about eaven: I wanted to write about the Jewish heaven but did not feel qualified because I did not and do not believe in 'it,' though I should.

Joshua Cohen

#35. I have been received more warmly by Everton than I have by Liverpool. It is scandalous that I should have to write these things about the club that I helped build into what it is today.

Bill Shankly

#36. I do a lot of revising on paper. Sometimes I think I should just write longhand - what I type reads very different once I print it out.

Sara Shepard

#37. I'm feeling a kind of liberty to write about what's interesting to me without worrying about what I should be writing about. And that feels good.

Eve Ensler

#38. The purpose of my writing, whatever I write, is not what may be right or wrong;
But for when I leave this body, my writings should remain that others may share.

Gian Kumar

#39. The day it comes out, there's already things that you start to go, 'Oh, I should have done that a little differently.' You start to make a list in your head. I actually write things down
what I'm going to do next time.

Howie Day

#40. He: I want you to write a love story
She: About?
He: About a boy for whom a girl wasn't his soulmate, but she was his soul- the one who kept him alive.
She: And what should I call it?
He: Just name it our love story

Namrata

#41. I don't think I ever worry too much about what our target audience is, what we should be releasing. I just write naturally and organically and try to write from the heart.

Martin Gore

#42. When I was in high school I saw Steven Wright, a brilliant one-liner comedian, and I thought: 'That's what I should do; I should write one-liners.' And I did. My first album is mostly one-liners.

Mike Birbiglia

#43. I have never believed in the axiom that a writer should first and foremost write about what he knows. I think it's a piece of misinformation.

William Trevor

#44. I should like to write about what happens when fictive people encounter and are embellished by real people.

Jean Giono

#45. People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable.

Rita Dove

#46. I try to be outraged by things that other people are just very accepting of, as though they're normal and can't be changed. A lot of what I write about is, 'Hey, you know, this stuff is really awful, and it doesn't need to be, and that's why it's so offensive.' Things should be better.

Matt Taibbi

#47. Mira, I wanna tell you something. I ain't got time to tell you what I should've when I had time, but I dig you a whole lot." "Deeg you?" she asked, puzzled. I explained to her what it meant and told her that I would write it to her in Spanish and say it like it was.

Piri Thomas

#48. I think that writing should be honest and simple, and it should say something about what it means to be a person. When God is good to us, we write in such a way that the act of reading becomes a pleasure to those who buy our books.

M.V. Carey

#49. What's funny about Jesus' Son is that I never even wrote that book, I just wrote it down. I would tell these stories and people would say, You should write these things down.

Denis Johnson

#50. I write not only what I want to read ... I write all the things I should have been able to read.

Alice Walker

#51. I am motivated to write because it is what I am meant to do. It is not a choice - it is what I am. I did not choose writing - it chose me. And I believe it is necessarily that way. Anyone doing this for some other reason should not be.

Elizabeth Wurtzel

#52. Raymond Chandler managed to write about L.A. his whole career. Should I keep going writing about New York? Is that what I should be doing? Songwriting doesn't work that way.

Lou Reed

#53. What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.

Justin Townes Earle

#54. Asking for advice about what you should write is a little like asking for help getting dressed. I can you tell you what I think looks good, but you have to wear it. And as every fashion victim knows, very few people look good in everything.

Betsy Lerner

#55. 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

#56. So, you know what? I'm not ready to write Gen Y off just yet and neither should you, because I think we're going to grow up just fine. Yeah, it pains me to admit it, but the kids are all right.

Sarra Manning

#57. I had to re-write "Philosophy" a lot. It was more obscure than what's in the book now, even! Some things I had to go back to and excise my former self, who was even more dense. I think you should teach whatever you want, Brian! That's the point of books like White Girls, to help free our thoughts!

Hilton Als

#58. I do believe that in the future, not by dismantling what we have here - I helped write that bill - but by moving forward, rallying the American people, I do believe we should have health care for all.

Bernie Sanders

#59. Don't outline your stories. A lot of fiction workshops say you should. I say the opposite. I quote Grace Paley: "We write what we don't know we know."

Andre Dubus

#60. People expect me to be dark and gloomy, then write that I'm a jolly chap, and after all, that is what I am. I think it's a case of an absolute romantic naivety that there should be a parallel between the work and the artist.

Michael Haneke

#61. I went with the old adage that you should write what you know. What I knew was 18th century Britain, so what I decided I would do is write a novel based on my dissertation research.

David Liss

#62. I think it's our job to write about what we're going through at the moment, and being 41, I'm not going to write about the same things I wrote about at 20. I don't think artists should be farmed out to pasture just because they're in rock n' roll.

Bonnie Raitt

#63. I do not believe that I should only write about what I know but that I should write also of the other.

Felisberto Hernandez

#64. I have lots of notebooks around, because one great advantage of writing by hand-in addition to how much it slows you down-is that it makes me write at the speed that I feel I should be composing, rather than faster than I can think, which is what happens to me on any keyboard.

John Irving

#65. I think great writers should write great shows, and I have trouble with, like, what you are in life shouldn't automatically make you what you do in your art. It doesn't necessarily translate.

Jenji Kohan

#66. What was sexier on a man than great abs and a heart full of hidden torment? They should bottle it and sell it by the truckloads. Or perhaps write a book: "Abs and Hidden Torment: A Man's Guide to Bagging Babes." I would have laughed if I didn't feel so much like crying.

Mia Sheridan

#67. I am of the firm opinion that no one should tell writers what to do, or what to write, or how to write.

Hisham Matar

#68. I don't agree with the sentiment 'write what you know.' ... I think one should write what one doesn't know. The world is bigger and wider and more complex than our small subjective selves. One should prod, goad the imagination.

Cynthia Ozick

#69. So I thought I should write five pages a day. And that's what I did. Eventually I had a book.

Don Winslow

#70. With respect to the distribution of your time the following is what I should approve. from 8. to 10 o'clock practise music. from 10. to 1. dance one day & draw another. from 1. to 2. draw on the day you dance, and write a letter next day. from 3. to 4. read French. from 4. to 5. exercise ...

Thomas Jefferson

#71. So I think a writer should write what he loves, the people he relates to.

David E. Kelley

#72. Why should I write a play? I don't have to write a play, do I? But somehow, I think that's what I'm here for, so I'd better do it.

Tom Stoppard