Write Up Quotes

#1. The military is a very cool world to write about. I went down to Ft. Benning, Ga., for military training, and I learned a lot about soldiers and officers and why they joined up and what their life has been like.

David Baldacci

#2. God has given every man an opportunity and a chance to re-write his or her story; it is up to you to use a blunt pen or a ball point . I have chosen a ball point and this is just the beginning.

Bayode Ojo

#3. 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

#4. I've always thought flight was fun and wanted to write about flight, and I knew a lot of househusbands who were having a really bad time with it. I thought flight might perk up a marriage here or there.

Steven Amsterdam

#5. I think it's hard to really write a song that will educate someone because songs are meant to be ... you don't want to be too didactic in a song because it doesn't make for good music. And I think the role of songs can be to inspire people but there needs to education and prose to back that up.

John Legend

#6. The industrial thing came about mainly through giving up trying to write pop songs in the early '90s. I don't think I was ever very good at pop music and as soon as I stopped trying, and started to write more the things I loved, it became much heavier and more aggressive.

Gary Numan

#7. I go back and forth between input phases where I'm reading a lot or trying to get out and explore the world a bit and soak up inspirations and then I'll get back into output mode and write and write and write.

Erin Morgenstern

#8. If I would get an album out every eight months and if I would write songs that were more up-tempo and try to focus more on making singles, then I could probably get more attention. But I don't think the albums would be very fun to listen to, and it would be a drag for me.

Chris Isaak

#9. Because you fight it out, and stumble, and write bad poetry, and pick yourself up again, and at the end, hopefully, someday youre sitting with your kid on her bedroom floor, talking about how you screwed everything up too.

Josie Bloss

#10. One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.

Arthur Koestler

#11. The girls were expected to grow up to be somebody's wife. They were also expected to read and write, those being considered soft indoor jobs that were too fiddly for the boys.

Terry Pratchett

#12. Write down five things you love to do. Next, write down five things that you're really good at. Then just try to match them up! Revisit your list once a year to make sure you're on the right track.

Hugh Jackman

#13. I was brought up in many different cultures, moving around all the time, and I find my identity in my songs. I project the identity I want to have throughout the songs that I write.

Mika.

#14. I know what I write about seems exotic to a lot of people, but not for me. I pulled up to an old trading post and saw a few elderly Navajos sitting on a bench. I felt right at home.

Tony Hillerman

#15. To write a short story, you have to be able to stay up all night.

Lorrie Moore

#16. When I was in school, I was always writing scripts and dressing up as characters. I'd constantly be that guy who'd get up on stage. I used to write imaginary TV shows, like soap operas, for fun.

Chris Lilley

#17. Twenty years on, the books are still fun to write and I've still got lots of stories I want to tell, mainly about social injustice and people chewed up by the system.

John Grisham

#18. Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline.

Ernest Hemingway,

#19. The more of those little light bulbs that can turn on the better. Eventually you'll have enough to light up a movie screen.

A.D. Posey

#20. One thing that worried me was how writers get categorized and so they end up having to write the same kind of book again and again. That is fine if it is what you want to do, but I would rather be locked in the trunk of my car with a weasel than write the same book every three years until I die.

Justin Cronin

#21. When I was pregnant, I had the romantic idea that after the baby was born I would not only take up reading in earnest again, but also write a novel while my daughter slept in her Moses basket. Of course, I barely had time to keep up with my magazines until she started sleeping properly.

Kate Beckinsale

#22. Write today's worries in sand. Chisel yesterday's victories in stone. Pick up the stone of the past.

Max Lucado

#23. I don't think it would be fun to write after inhaling art fumes. (What are art fumes?) No, I just make stuff up. It's easier that way.

Neil Gaiman

#24. If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.

Elmore Leonard

#25. Sit up straight." "Don't fidget." "Write a thank-you note the minute you receive a gift or return home from a party." "Always have fresh flowers, no matter the cost." "Clean gloves and shoes are the sign of a lady." "Never let the help get the upper hand." "Be discreet." "Be above gossip.

Melanie Benjamin

#26. I write poems, I meditate. I don't live up to people's expectations. I don't do the conventional cool things - I know I am the coolest person.

Kangana Ranaut

#27. When I hit a period of not being able to write music, I get up and walk away. It's pretty mean but it's true.

Lily Allen

#28. Several times during the last three years I have taken up my pen to write to you, but always I feared lest your affectionate regard for me should tempt you to some indiscretion which would betray my secret.

Arthur Conan Doyle

#29. Don't 'write what you know.' Make up something new!

Joe Haldeman

#30. I think it would be exhausting and depressing, to write, to watch and to live, if it was just focused on drama. It's heavy. Also, I think the humor really highlights the pathos and the struggle. You can slam it up against drama, and it makes both shine.

Jenji Kohan

#31. If I ever saw my muse she would be an old woman with a tight bun and spectacles poking me in the middle of the back and growling, Wake up and write the book!

Kerry Greenwood

#32. Write 1000 words a day. That's only about four pages, but force yourself to do it. Put your finger down your throat and throw up. That's what writing's all about.

Ray Bradbury

#33. In the shower, with the hot water coming down, you've left the real world behind, and very frequently things open up for you. It's the change of venue, the unblocking the attempt to force the ideas that's crippling you when you're trying to write.

Woody Allen

#34. 95. But please don't write again to tell me how you have woken up weeping. I already know how you are in love with your weeping.

Maggie Nelson

#35. Stop it now and take control. Write this on a card and pin it up where you can see it ... MY THOUGHTS CONTROL MY LIFE!

Peter A. Cohen

#36. College isn't in everyone's hearts. I am living proof, though, that school doesn't mess up your plans. It gives you more experiences to write about.

J. Cole

#37. Your eyes make me pick up my pen and write.

Avijeet Das

#38. Shut up and write.

Chuck Wendig

#39. Mary, my little girl, was confirmed in a Buddhist temple. She saw the Life write up on Buddhism, with pictures of the ceremony, and she said she wanted to be confirmed there because she only liked Jesus as a kid. She was a little disappointed in him when he grew up.

Kenneth Rexroth

#40. I write about personal experiences. I write about things that have happened to me and the people around me, so you just sort of keep this antenna up and on the lookout for things to say.

James Bay

#41. Early on, a story's meaning and rationale seem pretty obvious, but then, as I write it, I realize that I know the meaning/rationale too well, which means that the reader will also know it - and so things have to be ramped up.

George Saunders

#42. I'm a big eater. I mean, a lot of my stand-up is about food, and you write about what you know, and that's the only thing I know. I don't know anything else.

Jim Gaffigan

#43. The Nazis may write like schoolboys, but they're capable of anything. That's just why they're so dangerous. People laugh at them, right up to the last moment...

Christopher Isherwood

#44. I write adult fiction, but a good 40 to 50 per cent of my readers are teenagers. I love that if they have to grow up and move past JK Rowling they can move to me. From Jo to Jodi!

Jodi Picoult

#45. As the voices fall silent, the individuals who make up the amorphous and always changing community must decide for themselves, as they always have. I can't write a coda because I can't speak for others. I can only and ever speak for myself.

G.R. Reader

#46. It was relatively easy to write 'The Cave of Lost Souls', though, because it came to me one night in a dream. I remember waking up and having this idea for a complete story - from start to finish - in my head, so I jotted it down, then later began writing the thing.

Paul Kane

#47. I get up early and open my emails, write cheques, and answer the phone; whatever needs to be done.

Martin Parr

#48. Everyone else thinks I'm a nonfiction writer. I think it's because my nonfiction is easier to find. But I write both in equal measure. I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself, and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.

Roxane Gay

#49. I can only write what makes me laugh, and what makes me laugh is the comedy I grew up on.

Brendan O'Carroll

#50. I decided that, if I were to write a teen series, I'd want to set it in a place that was familiar to me - Manhattan, where I'd grown up - and I'd model the characters on myself and my friends.

Cecily Von Ziegesar

#51. A lot of times students will come up to me and say, "Well, I can't write because I don't know what I think about such-and-such." And I say, "That's why you have to write." You don't wait until you know, because then who cares - it's static.

Alison Hawthorne Deming

#52. I spent every night until four in the morning on my dissertation, until I came to the point when I could not write another word, not even the next letter. I went to bed. Eight o'clock the next morning I was up writing again.

Abraham Pais

#53. People say I make up wild stories. But all I have to do is write down stuff that really happens.

Chuck Palahniuk

#54. I love to write honest songs that name real people, then get up onstage and live out those emotions in front of 15,000 people.

Taylor Swift

#55. I write whatever shows up. That's good enough for me. I'm part of the first generation that wants to still do original material and not tour around as an oldies act.

Lou Reed

#56. But if you worry about other people as you write a first draft, you will not be able to free your unconscious mind to give up its treasures. It will be bound by the great dogs of your fear,

Pat Schneider

#57. No one can write perfect English and keep it up through a stretch of ten chapters. It has never been done.

Mark Twain

#58. I didn't realize what I was even doing when I started to record music. I was just doing it for fun. I picked up whatever recording gear I could get my hands on and I'd sit there day-in and day-out ... experimenting with different sounds and trying to write songs.

Alex Goot

#59. It's being a grown up, which I never figured out how to do, scrubbing the tub, and remembering to eat and shampoo my hair. It's the basics: I can write a whole book, but I cannot handle the basics.

Elizabeth Wurtzel

#60. I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don't have a little list of topics to write about.

Tracy Chapman

#61. I write synopses after the book is completed. I can't write it beforehand, because I don't know what the book's about. I invent something for my publisher because he asks for one, but the final book ends up very differently.

Jackie Collins

#62. I write for a radio show that, no matter what, will go on the air Saturday at five o'clock central time. You learn to write toward that deadline, to let the adrenaline pick you up on Friday morning and carry you through, to cook up a monologue about Lake Wobegon and get to the theater on time.

Garrison Keillor

#63. I have a dreadful feeling in my bones that future historians may write of the May 2014 elections: This was the wake-up call from which Europe failed to wake up.

Timothy Garton Ash

#64. I got so anxious sitting in the make-up chair for hours with my face covered. I had my doctor write a prescription for valium. I couldn't have done it without the pill.

Kim Hunter

#65. I make up stories in my head all the time, but I've never written them down. But I write a lot of story songs. Any song I'm singing, I sort of see it like a movie in my head. That's why a lot of times I close my eyes when I'm singing.

Ashley Monroe

#66. I've always felt that life is a novel, and part of it is written for you, and part of it is written by you. It's up to you to write the ending, ultimately.

Lynn Johnston

#67. I don't write non-fiction because I get bored. Some of my writing is autobiographical, but not the way readers imagine. I use my memory of settings, events and people. I weave history into my stories, but my narratives are made up.

Sefi Atta

#68. I would never tell myself, you have to write 20 pages today or something. But I do try to show up. Read what I wrote, fix things.

Celeste Ng

#69. My way of being with people is probably incredibly unhealthy, in that I'll be incredibly social, and I won't write a word for maybe a year, and I'll just be with people, going to parties and soaking up stories, and just sort of recharging all of my ideas.

Chuck Palahniuk

#70. The best way in the world for breaking up a writer's block is to write a lot.

John Gardner

#71. All we can do is write, but its up to the reader to decide if we wrote masterpieces or empty silliness, and there is nothing you can do till another reader says different.

Uma Nnenna

#72. It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can't wait until morning - it'll be gone.

Mary Oliver

#73. Take your situation and pretend it is not happening to you. Pretend it is not important, that it doesn't matter. How much easier would it be for you to know what to do? How much more quickly and dispassionately could you size up the scenario and its options? You could write it off, greet it calmly.

Ryan Holiday

#74. I get up at 5.30am, sluice myself and have two Weetabix and some mint tea, before starting to write by 6am.

Andrew Motion

#75. I can't sum up my books. They're all rather complicated. Sometimes I think they're too complicated. But that's the way I am. When I start to write a book, my head gets full of all kinds of detail.

Ruth Rendell

#76. There is a whole industry in America of people who want to write, and those who teach it. Even if the students don't end up writing, what's good about them taking the courses is, they become great readers, learning to appreciate the writing.

Edmund White

#77. Technically and financially, it might still make sense to give up on Ares I and simply write off the money spent on it, but politically, that's probably impossible.

Henry Spencer

#78. When I sit down to write, I know everything I need to know ... I start writing, and within 30 seconds or 60 seconds, I'm watching a movie. I'm not making this stuff up; the characters are acting it out,and I'm just writing it down.

M.J. Rose

#79. If I was asked to write a poem about her. Every word I use would end up, being her name. And it would still sound so beautiful and breathtaking to me in the end.

Akshay Vasu

#80. I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good.

James Thurber

#81. I started writing when I was a journalist. But every time I sat down to write a novel or a story, I ended up writing about myself, which was incredibly annoying and self-involved.

Damian Barr

#82. Then sit down and write
or stand up and
write
but write
no matter what
the other people are
doing,
no matter what
they will do to
you.

Charles Bukowski

#83. I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.

Ann Brashares

#84. You don't realize what a strain it is on the nerves to write or think-of-writing all day long, and to sleep full of nervous dreams, and to wake up not knowing who one is: this all stems from anxiety about finishing the book, about time 'growing short', etc., and the perpetual strain of invention.

Jack Kerouac

#85. I don't know if it's cool to say this anymore, but I grew up listening to Gary Glitter. A majority of his songs were in that shuffle-blues beat, and I think that's probably why I tend to write like that.

Martin Gore

#86. When I write, I hold nothing back. I write like he'll never read it. Because he never will. Every secret thought, every careful observation, everything I've saved up inside me, I put it all in the letter. When I'm done, I seal it, I address it, and then I put it in my teal hatbox.

Jenny Han

#87. Being a mother has absolutely forced me. You have to write things down and have systems for all of it. And then you set up systems and you realize they don't work.

Maggie Gyllenhaal

#88. This is what I have discovered - and it has been a gift in itself - that books live over and over again in different people's minds. That I might mean one thing as I write, but a reader's experiences will take it somewhere else. That is like a conversation, I think. It is a true connecting up.

Rachel Joyce

#89. Sometimes I'll get ideas in the middle of the night. Sometimes at 3 in the morning I'll get up, and I have a notebook by my bed and have to write it down. I'll dream an idea. Sometimes I see an image online, and I think, 'OK, let's make that a three-layer cake!'

Rosanna Pansino

#90. I didn't plan to write YA - I had a story that simply wasn't working as a straight-up fantasy novel.

Carrie Vaughn

#91. It would probably be better if I got involved in fewer things just because I'd have more time to write for my own purposes ... But if somebody calls you up with a really cool project, it's hard to just say 'no' because you don't feel like working.

Adam Schlesinger

#92. I tend to write three to four hours a day, depending - oftentimes very late at night. When I write on Twitter, I do other things: I'm working, grading, or reading, and I'm procrastinating, and I'll pop on Twitter and be like, 'Hey, what's up? Yogurt's delicious.'

Roxane Gay

#93. I did not end up as broadly educated as my Cambridge colleagues, but I graduated probably better equipped to write a book on my chosen subject.

Richard Dawkins

#94. When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.

David Guterson

#95. My feelings are, if you're gonna lead a rock n' roll lifestyle, don't let it affect your work. I know I can stay up all night and still come in the next day and write a song, and nothing will stop me from doing it. I expect the same from everyone else.

Marilyn Manson

#96. I'd rather sit down and write a letter than call someone up. I hate the telephone.

Henry Miller

#97. When I'm putting a story together, I generally know the ending and a couple of the points halfway through, and I've got sort of an idea about the beginning, and although I do write the story one sentence at a time, when I'm thinking it up, I'm thinking it up all at once.

Alan Moore

#98. I may have a little bit of a talent for music, but I've learnt to tap into my own self when I write. When I put the drill bit inside my heart, sometimes I come up with something light and frothy, sometimes with something deep and painful, but it's great to connect with the audience.

Neil Diamond

#99. Love is growing up.

A.D. Posey

#100. The Polar Express was the easiest of my picture book manuscripts to write ... Once I realized the train was going to the North Pole, finding the story seemed less like a creative effort than an act of recollection. I felt, like the storys narrator, that I was remembering something, not making it up.

Chris Van Allsburg