When You Write Quotes

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

Edward Abbey

#2. You should write about your life. It's kind of funny. When it's not depressing as hell.

Jeni Decker

#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. 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

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

Ernest Cline

#6. 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

#7. It's really hard when people write nasty things about you all the time. As much as good things are said about you, it's always those one or two bad comments that really stay with you and gnaw at you. I try not to read that stuff if I can.

Jordin Sparks

#8. When you teach, it's sometimes necessary to consciously not write for a month or two - and then pick a time in the future to sink back in. It makes you less frustrated and more in control. I do best when I give myself breaks and come back hungry.

Tom Barbash

#9. The problem in society is not kids not knowing science. The problem is adults not knowing science. They outnumber kids 5 to 1, they wield power, they write legislation. When you have scientifically illiterate adults, you have undermined the very fabric of what makes a nation wealthy and strong.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#10. When I write, I'm looking to turn you on and tell a good story. No more, no less. No lofty goals here.

Kirsten McCurran

#11. 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

#12. I always wanted to write when I was a kid; it just never occurred to me that you could have a job that didn't involve any actual work ... I felt it would be fun to have a job like that where you could make stuff up and be irresponsible and get paid for it.

Dave Barry

#13. When you write about what you dream, you become a writer.
When you dream about what you write, you become haunted by a curse.

A. Saleh

#14. When we think we have something to say we are usually wrong. We are fooling ourselves. Trip into discovery. Don't write what you know, discover something new.

Marie Howe

#15. As I write, there is a craze for what is called psychoanalysis, or the cure of diseases by explaining to the patient what is the matter with him: an excellent plan if you happen to know what is the matter with him, especially when the explanation is that there is nothing the matter with him.

George Bernard Shaw

#16. You don't need to know the purpose as you write, but when you read over something you've written, you should be able to point to any given element - be that a line of dialogue, a descriptive phrase, a plot point - and say why it's there.

Diana Gabaldon

#17. There is no better feeling than when you write something you know is a piece of you and that, at some point, is going to communicate with someone else.

Alanis Morissette

#18. You have a strange relationship with calamity when you're a writer: you write about it; as an artist, you objectify and fetishize it. You render life into material, and that's a creepy thing to do.

Tony Kushner

#19. Don't fall into the trap of having to have everything perfect to write or wait until the mood strikes you. If you want it as a job, treat it like a job, and just as you don't go to work only when you feel like it, you have to condition yourself to sit and write even when the ideas don't flow.

Kim Harrison

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

Jerry Stahl

#21. It's easy to write a short story and frighten people for five pages, but to work at length, when you do it as in 'The Turn Of The Screw' or 'A Christmas Carol,' it's different; you have to build it and build it.

Susan Hill

#22. If you're bored tonight why don't you write down everything that comes to mind when you hear the word toothpaste?

Jaclyn Moriarty

#23. When you get an e-mail and reply to the sender, you simply obliterate everything they sent you and then, in small square brackets, write: [deletia] It stands for everything that's been lost.

Douglas Coupland

#24. When people ask that question, it's very hard to nail down a formula or a circumstance that I always write in, but I definitely do believe that there have been moments, musically, when I have channeled something, you know?

Kimbra

#25. Somebody described it to me the best as when you go in to write a song with two people that you've never met, you're pretty much going in and taking off your pants in front of strangers, so it's a really weird feeling.

Scotty McCreery

#26. Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write 'War and Peace' in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.

Stanley Kubrick

#27. 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

#28. When you're a mid-list writer, it pays to write fast.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. How about I call you when I finish this?"
"But you don't even have my phone number," he said.
"I strongly suspect you write it in the book.

John Green

#32. If you mean do I use the guitar when I'm sitting at home writing stuff, then basically no, never. All I would ever write would be stuff that my fingers easily fall into.

Fred Frith

#33. When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school ... But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.

Miles Davis

#34. When you write a movie, you have a hundred collaborators. But when you write a novel, it's yours.

Sidney Sheldon

#35. Well, when you write about people of a certain age ... we are in a postsexual situation. If I write about younger people then I write sexually, because their drive is sexual. It depends upon the circumstances.

Edward Albee

#36. I wanted to write in film or something like that. I thought acting was an embarrassing thing to say you wanted to do, especially when you're young. It seemed really uncool.

Max Minghella

#37. When people climb a mountain, they don't stay there. They come back down and tell everyone they climbed a mountain. Writing a book is like that. If you write a book, you should tell everyone.

Bob Howard

#38. As you probably know, I've written a lot about the presidency, so it's obviously exciting when you get to interview a president and write about it.

Nancy Gibbs

#39. When life tries to define you with its hardship, you gotta push back, look it straight in the eye and say, 'No matter what life throws at me, I'm going to keep telling myself that I will overcome.' And every time you own that truth, you write your own life script.

Nikki Rosen

#40. It's only at first sight,when the mind's a blank slate,that you get the purest look.
So I fold the flap back,and write:
Tumbleweeds.

Alyson Noel

#41. I learned that lesson a long time ago. When you write popular fiction you're going to get bashed by critics.

John Grisham

#42. Poetic success is when you write a poem that makes you excited and bewildered and aglow.

Matthea Harvey

#43. The people around you are you. They share your history. They can even write it with you. And when you lose one, there's no doubt you lose some of yourself, however they're lost.

Danny Wallace

#44. My dad dying was actually a reason for me to stop music properly for about a year, because he was a big supporter. All I wanted to do was write a song about him and, you know, when something's too fresh, you can't quite word it.

Gin Wigmore

#45. You don't just go to the studio and say, 'I'm going to write a hit.' It becomes a hit when people like your compositions.

Chuck Berry

#46. When your heart is open, your eyes see the beauty that is all around you.

A.D. Posey

#47. you say you often feel this madness. what do you do when it comes upon you?
I write poetry.
is poetry madness?
non-poetry is madness.
what is madness?
madness is ugliness.
what is ugly?
to each man, something different.

Charles Bukowski

#48. 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

#49. Writing a novel is not at all like riding a bike. Writing a novel is like having to redesign a bike, based on laws of physics that you don't understand, in a new universe. So having written one novel does nothing for you when you have to write the second one.

Daniel Alarcon

#50. It's amazing what you can do when you get creative.

A.D. Posey

#51. Don't write us off. Nobody thought we'd win the World Series in 2005, but we did. There are years when we think we're great, and we're bad. I mean, the funny thing about this game is that you can't figure it out.

Jerry Reinsdorf

#52. I think inspiration is strongest when I find a balance between observation and participation. You can't write about what it means to dance by watching from the bleachers.

Chelsey Philpot

#53. 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

#54. When they write a bad review, and you agree with it, that's the worst feeling. When you know you've done what you wanted and the best you could and you love the outcome, then you look at everything differently. Not everyone's going to love everything you do.

Albert Hammond Jr.

#55. 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

#56. When you start writing a picture book, you have to write a manuscript that has enough language to prompt the illustrator to get his or her gears running, but then you end up having to cut it out because you don't want any of the language to be redundant to the pictures that are being drawn.

Daniel Handler

#57. Ever since I was young, 14 or 15, I wondered if you could write a book that combined the visceral thrill of watching a movie with the total immersion you feel when you're inside a good book. And I had some success as a screenwriter before I began writing books.

Rick Yancey

#58. You must be a great warrior when you contact first thoughts and write from them.

Natalie Goldberg

#59. Poetry is simple when you write what you see and feel, searching for the words only makes it difficult

Rayvon L. Browne

#60. People certainly will love what you write, when you represent them in your words.

M.F. Moonzajer

#61. When you're on your own, you have all the self-censorship that everybody has when they try and write. All the little voices that say, 'No, you can't write that, what will they think of that?'

Nick Cave

#62. When you write your memoir you will understand, perhaps for the first time, the significance of your life through the language, images and emotions you craft from the memory.

Maureen Murdock

#63. When you look into the eyes of your people out there that came to see you, that's when it's like, 'Yep, this is what it's all about.' This is why we don't sleep, and this is why we write songs and try to be the best. This moment right here onstage.

Luke Bryan

#64. When you write a song, it may come from a personal space, but it very seldom actually represents you. It comes out of a sort of mood of melancholy, somehow. It's almost theatrical.

James Taylor

#65. It used to be that you had to make female TV characters perfect so no one would be offended by your 'portrayal' of women. Even when I started out on 'The Office' eight years ago, we could write our male characters funny and flawed, but not the women. And now, thankfully, it's completely different.

Mindy Kaling

#66. When I write, when I'm going hot, I don't want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you're pushing it.

Charles Bukowski

#67. Two live grenades that nearly detonated each other. Wave the white flag and count your dead. The war is over. Nurse the wounded and heal your cuts. Write down the memories and tell the tales in later years when you can see the good with the bad.

Kate Monahan

#68. That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write 'Fuck you' right under your nose.

J.D. Sallinger

#69. When you know who you are as an artist and you have your own identity and got it figured out it helps you know what to write about.

Keifer Thompson

#70. I never think about a movie when I'm writing a book, because I think only two things could happen and both of them are bad. You write a lousy novel and a lousy film.

Don Winslow

#71. When you cast somebody, you write to their strengths.

Geoff Stults

#72. I write about what interests me. It's very dangerous when you try to satisfy an audience.

Jonathan Carroll

#73. When I lived in a little flat in Pimlico in 1981, I'd write in the hallway. As you walked in, there was a tiny little recess type thing, hardly a hallway, really, and I'd sit there writing songs with my guitar.

Paul Weller

#74. When you write a manuscript, it feels like being in a relationship with someone. You'll hate it, get bored with it, be pissed of, like you just want to break up. But, just like any relationship, you will fall in love again and again, like you don't want to lose it.

Alvi Syahrin

#75. 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

#76. When you're on tour, you're trying to get the crowd involved and really sing and perform to them. When you're going to write and be in the studio, it's like, 'Now I have to think about me.' That's the mind-set you have to work with.

Kris Allen

#77. 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

#78. It comes back to the same old question people are always asking me: 'When are you going to do a solo record?' Well, if I did, it would probably be similar to 'Baluchitherium,' meaning it would be Van Halen music - which I write anyway - but without singing.

Eddie Van Halen

#79. When you make a melody that doesn't come with words from the get-go, sometimes you're just thinking about random vowel sounds that go with it - and it's really, really hard to write lyrics that actually obey the vowel sounds.

David Longstreth

#80. I never write in a linear way. And I tell students not to. You can only know so much about a book when you first start.

Carol Anshaw

#81. You have certain expressions when you write music, a lot of different emotions, a lot of different feelings.

Phil Anselmo

#82. Unfortunately in the matter of Speech Defects, when so much depends on the temperament and individuality, a case can always be produced that can prove you are wrong. That is why I won't write a book [Lionel Logue concluded]

Mark Logue

#83. Sometimes you can write a great scene, but when you're actually in a situation and it doesn't work, you have to be flexible enough to make it work for you.

Diane Kruger

#84. Writing is like praying, because you stop all other activities, descend into silence, and listen patiently to the depths of your soul, waiting for true words to come. When they do, you thank God because you know the words are a gift, and you write them down as honestly and cleanly as you can.

Helen Prejean

#85. You have a story in there, Lucy," she said, touching my head. "Or a character, a place, a poem, a moment in time. When you find it, you will write it. Word after word after word after word," she whispered.

Patricia MacLachlan

#86. If you're in a country and you want to learn about it, it's a good idea to go and found out what they have to say for themselves; you might want to write a good story about it, when they're not looking.

Marion Davies

#87. How do you write about something, even something real and painful-like suicide-when all of the writing that's been done on that subject has robbed you of any originality of expression?

Jeffrey Eugenides

#88. When I write, it feels like there are two little creatures that sit on each of my shoulders. One whispers, "You can do this. You've got what it takes." The other sounds like my mother-in-law.

Carla H. Krueger

#89. The key to being a wonderful writer is not to write. You just get out of the way. Leave room for God to walk in the room. And when I write something that I know is right, I get on my knees and say 'thank you.'

Michael Jackson

#90. Mr. Clinton," he had said, when Henry ventured to inquire about a particularly ambiguous examination, "you may write until doomsday for all I care, but if your answers do not coincide with my answers they are wrong. Wrong, sir.

Harper Lee

#91. The studio is not the place to write. You need to be 75% ready when you go into the studio, and then the music can develop to the next stage.

Rick Wakeman

#92. You write alone, but you write hoping that there will be readers who will connect with what you write, and it's so wonderful and amazing - I can't even tell you - when that actually happens.

Ann Leckie

#93. 10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer
Write.
Write more.
Write even more.
Write even more than that.
Write when you don't want to.
Write when you do.
Write when you have something to say.
Write when you don't.
Write every day.
Keep writing.

Brian Clark

#94. What you have to realize when you write poetry, or if you love poetry, is that poetry is just naturally the greatest god damn thing that ever was in the whole universe

James Dickey

#95. I was writing all my childhood. And I wrote two novels when I was 17, which were terrible. And I'm not sorry I threw them out. So, I wrote. I had to write. You know, the thing was, I had no education.

Doris Lessing

#96. When you feel sad, it's okay. It's not the end of the world. Everyone has those days when you doubt yourself, and when you feel like everything you do sucks, but then there's those days when you feel like Superman. It's just the balance of the world. I just write to feel better.

Mac Miller

#97. It's a big shame that when you have a platform to write about Save the Children, the media interest lies with my moral alignment.

Erin O'Connor

#98. And so I write this for you, My Sarah. With the hope that one day, when you're old enough, this story that lives with me, will live with you as well. When a story is told, it is not forgotten. It becomes something else, a memory of who we were; the hope of what we can become.

Tatiana De Rosnay

#99. When writing a book, don't think about who is going to see it. Write about how you feel in the moment. Don't let a good idea get away.

B.A. Gabrielle

#100. As an artist you're looking for universal triggers. You want it both ways. You want it to have an immediate impact, and you want it to have deep meanings as well. I'm striving for both. But I hate it when people write things that sound like they've swallowed a f ... dictionary.

Damien Hirst