Write In Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. 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

#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. 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

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.

Audre Lorde

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. 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

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

C.S. Woolley

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. In the Illinois State Capitol, in Springfield, farmer-legislators write the agriculture laws.

Bill Dedman

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. 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

#28. The day you write to please everyone you no longer are in journalism. You are in show business.

Frank Miller

#29. Only a fool wants war, but once a war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. It cannot even be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy, and it is that savage joy that inspires our bards to write their greatest songs about love and war.

Bernard Cornwell

#30. Someday, when he was good enough, he would ask her to write them in a book and let him do all the pictures.

Katherine Paterson

#31. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write.

Natalie Goldberg

#32. It's about you putting in the work, practicing every day, and hopefully one day you write the song the whole world wants to get down to. And one day you're going to be sitting next to Ellen DeGeneres talking about how you broke records and rocked the Super Bowl!

Bruno Mars

#33. A screenplay is really a blueprint for something that will be filmed. Therefore you must always keep in mind that whatever you write is going to be staged, for real.

D.J. MacHale

#34. 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

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

Patricia Hampl

#36. 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

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

Gay Talese

#38. 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

#39. 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

#40. A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

Bill Gates

#41. 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

#42. 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

#43. The time comes in life when we have read enough. It's time to stop reading. It's time to lay down the books and write.

Albert Einstein

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

Barbara Tuchman

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

Augusten Burroughs

#46. 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

#47. Just Keep Writing! Who cares if it's a Saturday, or if you left your laptop at home, or if you're around people? Just write one word, one line, jot down one idea. No matter how little you write, it's movement in the right direction. Forward. Toward completion.

Tammy Ferebee

#48. I used to write things for friends. There was this girl I had a crush on, and she had a teacher she didn't like at school. I had a real crush on her, so almost every day I would write her a little short story where she would kill him in a different way.

Stephen Colbert

#49. I wanted to write something that would be a comedy in the sense of making people feel happier when they finish it than they did when began it.

Neil Gaiman

#50. Pyle could see pain when it was in front of his eyes. (I don't write that as a sneer; there are so many of us who can't)

Graham Greene

#51. I felt like I could write about quiet, self-contained moments and also about those moments when the world rushes in again.

Jenny Offill

#52. If I come across an issue, or something I feel strongly about, and I happen to think of a song that would go in that direction, then I do it. But that's not what I start out, necessarily, to do. Sometimes I may have an idea for a song - Well, I'm going to write about a thing.

Charlie Daniels

#53. Some comics have long routines to get them in the mood - I just prefer to sit down, write out the same jokes in a different order and then have a little prayer that I won't be met by silence.

Jack Whitehall

#54. Duty. Honor. He yearns to write his name large across the book of history, to get away from his wife, or both. Perhaps he just wants to be warm for once in his life.

George R R Martin

#55. I could write pages and pages about the delights of being a full-time housewife and mother and trying to write and support a family with two babies - but I don't use that kind of language in public.

Marion Zimmer Bradley

#56. I believe strongly in an author's moral responsibility. But his first obligation is to write good books.

Orhan Pamuk

#57. 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

#58. 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

#59. 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

#60. That was par for the course but I also found that commissions were being canceled and in fact I considered this directly libelous - I write biographies for a living as well as being a journalist - for a non fiction book to be called fiction from beginning to end.

Anthony Holden

#61. Few people have written significant books about San Francisco. Robert Duncan was, in my opinion, often in the clouds. If he walked the streets a lot he didn't write about as such.

Stephen Vincent Benet

#62. There are times when I can't believe how much ridiculous stuff happens to me and how brilliant it is to be in a position to write about it.

Carla H. Krueger

#63. 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

#64. Because I'm an art historian, I have some experience of writing that comes out of close attention. That's what really art history is. You're looking at something very closely, and you try to write in a meticulous way about it.

Teju Cole

#65. 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

#66. Then they started pulling me in and I was very resistant. All the other actors would be saying write more, more dialogue for me, and I'd always be saying 'No, less, less'.

Peter Berg

#67. I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.

Marilyn Hacker

#68. One of my favorite ways to write paranormal, as in the 'Wake' trilogy, is to write very normal characters with just a hint of something other-worldly. Like somewhere, maybe, someone really can get sucked into other people's dreams.

Lisa McMann

#69. It is hard to write it in words that I can read, that re-establishes the fact that has been haunting me for the past one year.

Kudrat Dutta Chaudhary

#70. He had promised Leslie that after Christmas he would stay home and fix up the house and plant his garden and listen to music and read books out loud and write only in his spare time.

Katherine Paterson

#71. I'm an efficient, good, professional reporter. But I also write. And so what I try to do is write about places that I know that I care about intensely and write about them in a way that conveys the fact that I care.

Alma Guillermoprieto

#72. 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

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

Antonia Fraser

#74. If you ever want to know why I'm not on a record label, look at 'The X Factor!' Honestly, of all the people that strive to break barriers in music and do good things and write great lyrics, not one of them would ever pass the first round on any of these competitions.

John Lydon

#75. I'm still learning so much with every play I write. So I wrestle with word choice, rhythm in final drafts. I think you have to be ruthless.

Stephen Karam

#76. You will find the greatest happiness in letting yourself be.

A.D. Posey

#77. 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

#78. We writers don't really think about whether what we write is good or not. It's too much to worry about. We just put the words down, trying to get them right, operating by some inner sense of pitch and proportion, and from time to time, we stick the stuff in an envelope and ship it to an editor.

Garrison Keillor

#79. 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

#80. I'm still proud of the 'Fionavar Tapestry.' The fact I don't write the same way is as much as anything else the fact a man in his 50s doesn't write the way a man in his 20s does - or he shouldn't.

Guy Gavriel Kay

#81. 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

#82. The same with the mortgage brokers that were selling people mortgages they couldn't afford. We shouldn't pay them on each mortgage they write. They should have what they call "skin in the game," where they've got to reimburse us if the guy who sold the mortgage defaults.

Richard Thaler

#83. I love thinking of movie stars who could play the characters in the books I write. I think Charlize Theron would make a lovely Marie Antoinette.

Kathryn Lasky

#84. In Endless Quest books, you start the plot, and the character has to make choices. Then you have to write one choice over here, one choice over there. The author might get one or two choices out.

Margaret Weis

#85. 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

#86. To me, it's not work. When I draw and I write, I find it relaxing. It's not like 9-to-5, where a man goes to a job and he isn't really interested in the job. Luckily, I get paid for doing what I'd do for nothing.

Bob Kane

#87. We are greatly distress because we fail to write the word of God in our heart.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#88. In a day and age when, unfortunately, so few write letters or keep a diary any longer, the Wright Papers stand as a striking reminder of a time when that was not the way and of the immense value such writings can have in bringing history to life.

David McCullough

#89. The muse holds no appointments. You can never call on it. I don't understand people who get up at 9 o'clock in the morning, put on the coffee and sit down to write.

Glen Hansard

#90. I've been reading about Crazy Horse and Custer for a long, long time, and I thought that if I was going to write a story that took place in the Black Hills, I should find a way to include this history in it.

Will Hobbs

#91. A lot of the lyrics I write involve images that just swing the song in a way that feels really good to me and there isn't a literal explanation. They're not riddles for the listener to solve.

Matt Berninger

#92. 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

#93. But why wasn't I born, alas, in an age of Adjectives; why can one no longer write of silver-shedding Tears and moon-tailed Peacocks, of eloquent Death, of the Negro and star-enameled Night?

Logan Pearsall Smith

#94. 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

#95. Those who read in a second language write and spell better in that language.

Stephen D. Krashen

#96. You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet, because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist.

Bob Dylan

#97. 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

#98. We are all emigrants from the same country - the land of childhood. What I want to do is write about the journey all of us have taken - or are in the process of taking - from that special place.

Patricia Calvert

#99. Does God write?
No, never.
God speaks,
Never writes at all.
Gita was spoken
Bible in Church is read aloud

Santosh Kumar

#100. I prefer writing for myself to perform, I guess. But if I had to choose, I'd rather perform in someone's movie than write a movie for someone else.

Kristen Schaal