Write My Own Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. I think I write fiction for the opportunity to get beyond the limits of my own life.

Wally Lamb

#5. I was kind of an outsider growing up, and I preferred reading to being with other kids. When I was about seven, I started to write my own books. I never thought of myself as wanting to be a writer - I just was one.

Ann Hood

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. I'm a self-taught musician so how I read music is kind of very weak and I kind of read my own version of tablature, I write my own crappy reminders on what I'm playing.

Jason Mraz

#9. I just write songs from the heart, and you never know who'll like the songs. I try to make sure that I don't allow anybody's expectation to weigh on me. I have my own expectation of life. I believe in letting people be free.

Ester Dean

#10. I'm such a slow writer I have no need for anything as fast as a word processor. I don't need anything so snappy. I write so slowly that I could write in my own blood without hurting myself.

Fran Lebowitz

#11. It is human nature to look away from illness. We don't enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality. That's why writing on the Internet has become a life-saver for me. My ability to think and write have not been affected. And on the Web, my real voice finds expression.

Roger Ebert

#12. I don't need music to write, but sometimes I put music on. I don't need special clothes or even my own equipment.

Jane Lindskold

#13. The smartest thing I did in law school: asking my future wife to go out dancing with me. The smartest thing I did when practicing law: quitting. The smartest thing I've done in writing: following my own head and writing what I wanted to write, and nothing but.

Ben Fountain

#14. Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than the idea of myself setting up a little universe of my own choosing and propounding a little immoralistic message. I write with a solid belief in all the Christian dogmas.

Flannery O'Connor

#15. When I'm my own editor, there's very little difference between the first draft and the final. I write what feels right to begin with. I rarely make any major changes.

Len Wein

#16. I'm very parasitic, from my own experiences. I just go and mine my dirty laundry, you know, and go through it until I find something that's interesting enough to me to write a song about.

Nikki Jean

#17. I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.

Ernest Hemingway,

#18. I want to write my own music, and I want to tour.

Cole Vosbury

#19. If there was anything that I learned with my own writing process, maybe there's too many choices what to write about. Just the amount of subject matter in the world these days; maybe that feels chaotic for me.

Eddie Vedder

#20. I write my own quotes. Except this one. I obviously stole this from somebody really clever.

Brian Celio

#21. Somehow, I realized I could write books about black characters who reflected my own experiences or otherworldly experiences - not just stories of history, poverty and oppression.

Tananarive Due

#22. I couldn't write. I grew tense. I was strangled by my own ego, by my petty desire for what I perceived to be the literary brass ring. I was missing the point, of course. The reward is in the doing.

Dani Shapiro

#23. If you consider the definition of authenticity, it's saying something and actually doing it. I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It's all authentic.

Lana Del Rey

#24. I could write stories; I could hide from the world and make my own instead of trying to change it or live in it. I could make paper people and I would love them too; I could make them almost real.

Ally Condie

#25. I wrote music. I was in a hardcore band when I was 14, and I wasn't good enough to play anyone else's songs, so I had to write my own.

Dito Montiel

#26. I pretty much just focus on making the records - unless I'm self-releasing them; then I do my own thing. But at some point, you have to stop worrying about chains of distribution, or it takes out of your time to write.

John Darnielle

#27. My fine friends who are perfectionists, each in their own world where they are petty dictators, could write a perfect bill. Those of us who have grown up and matured ... understand that we have to work together on the big issues.

Newt Gingrich

#28. It strikes me that I need to throw out the dictionary the world gave me about what it means to be a mother, a wife, a person of faith, an artist, and a woman and write my own.

Glennon Doyle Melton

#29. I write for the kid in me ... Often when I'm working on a story, I'll find myself laughing at something my characters have done, or even being surprised at where they've taken the story. It's as if they have a life all their own. What I do is create them and then let them go on to entertain me ...

Elvira Woodruff

#30. I do think novels are overlooked. I did write one some years ago that I think is quite good, called 'The End of the Story,' not to blow my own horn.

Lydia Davis

#31. I decided that in order to become a big famous rock star, I would need to write my very own songs instead of wasting my time learning other peoples music too much. It may act as an obstruction in developing your very own personal style.

Kurt Cobain

#32. I've made sure that in any situation and with any record label, I'm allowed to write my own music.

Taylor Swift

#33. The reason we did 'Land of a Thousand Dances' and 'Gloria' on 'Horses' was because I liked repetitious, three-chord rock songs, but I didn't understand that I could write my own. I didn't realize that you could use those chords a million times.

Patti Smith

#34. I play all my own instruments. I write my own material. And I do not lip-synch. I sing live.

Kaci Brown

#35. I would try to write my own story about some East Coast suburbanite having an affair or something like that. So I did that for maybe two years or so, and it just wasn't working for me at all.

Donald Ray Pollock

#36. I am very grateful for the success, because it has given me the freedom to write without pressure, in my own way, and has enabled me to maintain my family and educate my children and grandchildren, as well as to create a Foundation to empower women and girls.

Isabel Allende

#37. I don't write this letter to put bitterness into your heart, but to pluck it out of mine. For my own sake I must forgive you.

Oscar Wilde

#38. Everybody has they're own audience you know what I'm saying. I write rhymes and make music for the people that I fell wanna hear my music. They write rhymes and make music for the people they feel wanna hear they're music.

Bun B.

#39. I write to please myself - of course, that is a given. But beyond this reach for pleasure, I know that I write for my countrymen, that they may be lifted from apathy and ignorance. I write because of a compulsion to make something out of the nothing that is my own life.

F. Sionil Jose

#40. I have never been one to write by rule, not even by my own rules.

William Carlos Williams

#41. Does Facebook behave like a tool in my hand, or a firehose designed to spew at me in accordance with other peoples' agendas? Concretely: can I write my own client to present a filtered view of the Facebook stream, or have other people do that for me?

Eric S. Raymond

#42. I never use paradox. The statements I make are wearisome and obvious common sense. I have even been driven to the tedium of reading through my own books, and have been unable to find any paradox. In fact, that thing is quite tragic, and some day I shall hope to write an epic called 'Paradox Lost'.

G.K. Chesterton

#43. I write as if to save somebody's life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.

Clarice Lispector

#44. I write my own stories. I like telling stories to little children. I think the good thing about stories is they carry you to another place which you've never been. And you feel like you're just enveloped by the book and the characters.

Georgie Henley

#45. I usually write from my own experience, and that's definitely a true statement for me. I think having a song about desiring to live and wanting to get it right, which many of my songs do, often I have to clarify that I haven't figured it out yet.

Jon Foreman

#46. Writing is my drug of choice. Everyday, I write. It eases out the pressure in my head and it all lands on a blank piece of paper. It has its own healing power and it gives me a feeling of contentment. Very addictive, yet it is not a criminal act.

Sonnia Kemmer

#47. I would eventually like to write and star in my own stuff. I think I have a good comedic sense, so I'd like to follow that road. I don't know what the future holds, but whatever I do, I'll commit.

Nick Swardson

#48. God bless my soul, woman, the more personal you are the better! This is a story of human beings - not dummies! Be personal - be prejudiced - be catty - be anything you please! Write the thing your own way. We can always prune out the bits that are libellous afterwards!

Agatha Christie

#49. Despite my own doubts of being marketable or crushworthy, my goal was to write a record of peppy pop songs, hopefully without annoying anybody.

Stephen Malkmus

#50. I attribute my good fortune to the simple fact that I have always tried to write straight from my own heart to the hearts of others.

Marie Corelli

#51. Sometimes I write about my own life. And sometimes I write about situations I see my friends going through. Sometimes I write about a scene I saw in a movie. I take inspiration from all different places.

Taylor Swift

#52. O why do I ever let anyone read what I write! Every time I have to go through a breakfast with a letter of criticism I swear I will write for my own praise or blame in future. It is a misery.

Virginia Woolf

#53. When I write fiction, I create characters whose views are not my own, and I allow them to be eloquent in defense of their, not my, views.

Orson Scott Card

#54. Other than the 'Sesame Street' soundtrack, which I was obsessed with, the first artist I really felt I'd discovered on my own was Amy Winehouse. She was the first female artist I wanted to write like and sing like and be like.

Alessia Cara

#55. The only reason I would write a break-up song is because my own problem of allowing myself to relate to people.

Zola Jesus

#56. My life in general, orderly or not, it allows me more freedom in my own writing. Sometimes I wonder, though - I have friends that sit around and just write all day. And I think it's the coolest thing.

Victoria Chang

#57. I feel more influenced in my own work by dreams than I do by other writers' works in a way. Or by popular culture, movies - what else is there to write about than love and loss?

Alice Hoffman

#58. If I wasn't acting, I'd try and be a footballer. I wouldn't be a musician because I can't write my own music. Realistically, I'd probably do something with dogs, like a vet or something. I love animals.

Jamie Blackley

#59. When I turned 19 I kinda realized that I needed to write my own songs instead of singing songs written by other people.

Colbie Caillat

#60. Either I need an assignment with a strict deadline - like something for a movie or a TV show or whatever - or else I need to create a made-up deadline for myself for my own records. Otherwise, I don't write anything.

Adam Schlesinger

#61. I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen.

Carl Sandburg

#62. Don't squeak at me, little sister," said Vikram irritably. "Let me choose my own final deed, so the angels have something impressive to write down on the last page of my book.

G. Willow Wilson

#63. When I used to write songs, especially on my own, it was just me and a guitar.

Nina Nesbitt

#64. I want to sell to people my own age, because that's the way I write songs.

John Mellencamp

#65. I write when the urge hits me, getting the words down as fast as I can type and then I step back from what I just wrote and start a dialectical process where I begin challenging my own writing.

Donald McKay

#66. I do not allow fan-fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan-fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.

Anne Rice

#67. The change which the writing wrought in me (and of which I did not write) was only a beginning; only to prepare me for the gods' surgery. They used my own pen to probe my wound.

C.S. Lewis

#68. My works are all expressly my own - pleasingly peculiar, not a borrowed stroke in one of them. I write as I feel and as I don't feel.

Amanda McKittrick Ros

#69. Believe it or not, I write on stage. I can't write anywhere else; I have to be in a moment. I also have to challenge myself to make something funny out of a premise. I never have my own jokes written. I have to change things as I go along, and I have to entertain myself.

J. B. Smoove

#70. I can only speak for myself and my own music, because that is what I am most familiar with, and I write about things that I am living or experiencing.

Laura Bell Bundy

#71. It was very difficult to write about my own country, because I have always been the outsider looking in.

Asne Seierstad

#72. I couldn't make myself write serious; I was surrounded by serious: in monographs, in articles, in my own dissertation prospectus, in the very earnest e-mails of students telling me just why that paper couldn't be in on time, cross their hearts and hope to get an A-minus.

Lauren Willig

#73. I could write down twenty cases wherein I wished that God had done otherwise than he did, but which I now see, if I had had my own way, would have led to extensive mischief.

Richard Cecil

#74. I mean there are tons of reasons. Well first of all. I write my own record. I don't take other people's materials. And I have a job which is being Willa Ford on top of getting back in the studio and writing and recording.

Willa Ford

#75. When I write software, I know that it will fail, either due to my own mistake, or due to some other cause.

Wietse Venema

#76. A lot of banging in the head has built up over the decades, and for my own sanity, I needed to write. I wanted to see if I could tell an honest, organic story about characters that interest me.

Martin Donovan

#77. I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.

Octavia Butler

#78. I'm not a writer. I'm not smart. I couldn't possibly even write my own story.

Zoey Deutch

#79. I never write the storyline ahead of the novel and stick to it like glue. I prefer my writing to be organic. It takes on a life of it's own.

Airam

#80. Usually as an artist I would write relatively within my own playing boundaries.

Michael Tolcher

#81. Every day, I wake up and I'm like, "Oh, I'm the star of my own show that has my name in it and I get to write it and hire actors that I've loved for such a long time!" It's amazing!

Mindy Kaling

#82. I write to tell my grandchildren where they come from, and what their grandparents were up to, and I hope they will in their own way continue. I invite anyone else to listen in.

Arthur Hertzberg

#83. When I sit down to write a novel, I am exploring my own relationship with God, with the struggle between good and evil, my own purpose.

Ted Dekker

#84. I have always enjoyed my solitude. It gives me time to think and to write.

Avijeet Das

#85. I used the pen name because I knew I wanted to write better novels under my own name someday.

Nelson DeMille

#86. I will write on the pages of history what I want them to say. I will be myself. I will speak my own name.

Maya Angelou

#87. I knew I couldn't do what Eddie Izzard does, so I just tried to write some stories that were based, or partly based, on my own experiences.

Deirdre O'Kane

#88. I wrote my first two long novels and an anthology of short narratives, when I was a manager of my own jazz bar. There was not enough time to write and I didn't know how to write novels. Therefore, I made written collages of aphorisms and rags.

Haruki Murakami

#89. I basically had the idea when I was 18 that I wanted to write my own songs. I knew it was going to be a long, tough road, and I was like, if I just begin now, by the time I'm 40, I'll be good at it.

Jason Mraz

#90. I write so slowly, I could write with my own blood and not hurt myself.

Fran Lebowitz

#91. I had developed this habit of writing scenarios as a hobby. I would find out which stories had been sold to be made into films and I would write my own treatment and then compare it.

Satyajit Ray

#92. I always write things that entertain me, and one of the things that I find really enjoyable to explore is the idea of love. I like looking at my own life and my friends and family and how love changes who you are. It fascinates me.

Stephenie Meyer

#93. It's just a freak of fate that I'm paid to write, not paying to print my own books - but I'd be doing it anyway: it's my life.

Iain Sinclair

#94. He really believes that to write a poem in praise of my mother (her eyes, her hair, her lips) and come by to read it aloud will soften her, make him welcome in his own house.

Ian McEwan

#95. It's not surprising to see in my own work, looking back, and in the work of some of my peers, an attention to family. It's nice to write a book that does tend toward significance and meaning, and where else are you sure of finding it?

Jonathan Franzen

#96. I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment.

W. Somerset Maugham

#97. The manner in which I learned to read and write, not only had great influence on my own mind, as I acquired it with the most perfect ease, so much so, that I have no recollection whatever
of learning the alphabet.

Nat Turner

#98. When I write a novel, I am God at my own typewriter, and there is nobody in between. But when I write a screenplay, it must be a compromise because there are so many elements which are outside the writer's province.

Leigh Brackett

#99. Hey, Salvo," asked Max when they had almost fallen asleep. "May I write your story?"
"Don't you dare, amico" was Salvatore's reply. "Kindly come up with your own storia, young Massimo. If you take mine, I'll have none left of my own

Nina George

#100. I'm not conscious of my own themes as I write first drafts, no, and in fact, I work hard to stay in that unconscious space and not ask myself what the novel is about or what my metaphors might mean because then, I think, you're just dead in the water.

Laurie Foos