Writing It Down Quotes

#1. It is by sitting down to write every morning that he becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.

Gerald Brenan

#2. You should give it to Max, Liesel. See if you can leave it on the bedside table, like all the other things." Liesel watched him as if he'd gone insane. "How, though?" Lightly, he tapped her skull with his knuckles. "Memorize it. Then write it down for him.

Markus Zusak

#3. No matter how many people try, no matter how many fancy songwriters in Los Angeles try to break it down to a formula ... to an extent, there isn't a science to writing great songs, I suppose.

Lauren Mayberry

#4. I may have a general broad-based idea of what I want to write about when I sit down to write a book, but I don't have any idea of what it's going to say. I would call my experience of creativity 'inspired by God' to produce certain pieces of information that might be useful to others.

Neale Donald Walsch

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. I'm very rigid about my schedule. I sit down at 8 A.M., and the Internet blocker goes on. My standard time is 120 minutes. I'm a compulsive writer, so it reminds me to stop writing ... If I write more than that, I turn into an ogre for my kids.

Claire Cameron

#9. 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

#10. The story unfolded quickly as I typed, in a way I was becoming familiar with. There was something about putting the truth on paper, bringing facts into the light of day where everyone could look at them, that made my fingers move faster -- it was becoming one of my favorite sensations on earth.

Gwenda Bond

#11. I spend all my time trying to keep thoughts away and ignore them ... But here you are, trying to remember your own life, writing your thoughts down so that you don't forget. I suddenly realized what it would be like not to know, not to remember.

Michael Scott

#12. I see myself as a first-draft writer, so when I sit down to write something, the first draft is usually pretty close to the end draft. There will be some tweaks along the way, but it's not like I'll go 20 pages and throw it out and start again.

Noah Hawley

#13. It's a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them.

Truman Capote

#14. I had always been more interested in playing and improvising than sitting down at a desk and writing out a piece. I'd always found it more fun to play, and the other a little bit tedious. I always had trouble with the decisions.

Terry Riley

#15. 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

#16. I read a lot of books. Here are the books I'm using for my 9/11 project. [Wright gestures to three six-foot-long shelves of books.] As I read them I highlight certain passages. Then I have an assistant write down each quote on an index card and note where it came from.

Lawrence Wright

#17. Everybody should write a book whether you get it published or not because the experience of sort of taking it all and throwing it down on paper is unbelievably cathartic.

Gary Dell'Abate

#18. It's good for you to write down your thoughts. It's
therapeutic because it forces you to slow down and think about
life.

Katie Kacvinsky

#19. Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

Franz Kafka

#20. And so I've written everything down, too afraid of my demons and what they may say, the doubt that eats at me from the inside. Too afraid that I'll forget and it'll all be a madwoman's dream.

Nadege Richards

#21. When I want to read something nice, I sit down and write it myself.

Mark Twain

#22. The best reason for putting anything down on paper is that one may then change it.

Bernard DeVoto

#23. Well, I hear things," she began. "And ... well, writing things down? I suppose that's a suitable job for a lady, isn't it? It's practically cultural.

Terry Pratchett

#24. I've never been high. Writing is my drug of choice. You don't ever have to come down from that kind of high, I tell ya. And, best part is, it's free.

Christy Hall

#25. Every time I try to write a song, when I sit down and think I'm going to write, I really want to write a song, and it never works out. It's always when it hits me unexpectedly on a plane or right before I go to bed, something like that.

Bruno Mars

#26. So much of writing isn't the fun parts like we get to discuss. It is sitting there putting the words down.

Hanya Yanagihara

#27. Every night before you go to bed write down three things good that happened to you that day. That's pretty much all it takes to get a happiness boost over time.

Eric Barker

#28. -I haven't been writing for years. I lost faith. it's not for me. Too many levels.
-What levels?
-All those levels of existence. us down here, and up there, high above us. the ceiling of the universe. I've chosen nothingness.

Tadeusz Konwicki

#29. If you don't write it down, it never happened.
Cathy (& Jack) Ryan

Tom Clancy

#30. We write so many songs, it is difficult to narrow them down.

Miranda Lambert

#31. I hope that the feeling of making poetry is not confined to the people who write it down. There is no luxury like it, and I hope we all share it ... I am sure that the great glory of poetry in one's heart does not wait on achievement.

Stella Benson

#32. I try to write about small insignificant things. I try to find out if it's possible to say anything about them. And I almost always do if I sit down and write about something. There is something in that thing that I can write about. It's very much like a rehearsal. An exercise, in a way.

Karl Ove Knausgard

#33. Todd and Tim [Tobias] write the music, and I come up with the melodies and lyrics. I call it the Ohio Rock Factory. Tim and Todd run the northern plant in Cleveland, and I've got the southern plant down here in Dayton. No tours permitted.

Robert Pollard

#34. During the first five years that I was writing the series, I made plans and wrote small pieces of all the books. I concentrate on one book at a time, though occasionally I will get an idea for a future book and scribble it down for future reference.

J.K. Rowling

#35. Historians desiring to write the actions of men, ought to set down the simple truth, and not say anything for love or hatred; also to choose such an opportunity for writing as it may be lawful to think what they will, and write what they think, which is a rare happiness of the time.

Walter Raleigh

#36. The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.

Adam Savage

#37. When I'm writing, I generally toy with an idea until it manifests itself - meaning a phrase or a tune comes into my head and eventually begins to jell. When something hits me, I write it down immediately. I don't wait, or it's gone.

Paul Anka

#38. I am not in control of how my characters live their lives, only in writing it down.

Kim Iverson

#39. If, while watching the sun set on a used-car lot in Los Angeles, you are struck by the parallels between this image and the inevitable fate of humanity, do not, under any circumstances, write it down.

Fran Lebowitz

#40. The best tip for writing is just to write; to sit down and write, to begin doing it and not to be scared by the blank page.

David Almond

#41. I love when the characters take over and live their own lives. I get to watch and write it all down.

Anna Adams

#42. Write it down. Written goals have a way of transforming wishes into wants; cant's into cans; dreams into plans; and plans into reality. Don't just think it - ink it!

Michael Korda

#43. Sit down right now. Give me this moment. Write whatever's running through you. You might start with "this moment" and end up writing about the gardenia you wore at your wedding seven years ago. That's fine. Don't try to control it. Stay present with whatever comes up, and keep your hand moving.

Natalie Goldberg

#44. We've defined decency down now that we look at the entertainment value of it, whether the acting is good, the writing is good, the story is good, no matter the depravity, we'll watch it.

Rush Limbaugh

#45. I was just sitting on my bed in a dormitory room, and I started writing. The thing that was magic about it was that once you put down one word, you could cross it out. I figured that out right away. I put down 'mountain,' and then I'd go, 'No - 'valley.' That's better.'

James Tate

#46. I picked up On The Road, Howl, and Naked Lunch (in that order) in high school. I was blown away. The writing was amazing and the places it took me was even more far out. It opened up new avenues of thinking for me and so I went down the beaten road.

Yony Leyser

#47. The natural way of ensuring that the past continues to live in the present and to inform the future is to write it down.

Ian Jack

#48. You get right down to it, writing is no means to self-help. It's scarcely a passing attempt at self-help.

Haruki Murakami

#49. The little things. Perhaps it is these trivialities I have been writing down in my book, these small hooks on which my whole life is hung.

S.J. Watson

#50. All family histories, personal histories,are as sketchy and unreliable as histories of the Phoenicians, it seems to me. We should note everything down, fill in the wide gaps if we can. Which is why I am writing this my darlings.

William Boyd

#51. I'm skeptical of passive learning. If you don't write down what you're hearing and learning, what the odds you remember it?

Ben Casnocha

#52. Sometimes I write a song and I'm down with it but I'm like yeah, whatever, and then everybody loves it and then it blows up. I'm like: "Okay! I didn't see that coming."

Bonnie McKee

#53. Write it down and remember that we never gave in, the mind of a child is where the revolution begins, so if the solution has never been to look in yourself, how is it that you expect to find it anywhere else

Immortal Technique

#54. Well I mean I just sit at the piano and maybe figure out some harmony or melody or both. Sometimes you can hear it in your head. Sometimes you don't always have to write it down. You just write it down so you can remember it.

Roy Hargrove

#55. The writing of a novel or short story or poem or whatever should elevate the audience, not drag the writer down to some level beneath herself. And she - the author - should fight always to prevent that dragging down, especially when the only possible benefit of allowing it to happen is monetary.

Caitlin R. Kiernan

#56. When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written.

George Saintsbury

#57. I remarked to Dennis that easily half the code I was writing in Multics was error recovery code. He said, "We left all that stuff out of Unix. If there's an error, we have this routine called panic, and when it is called, the machine crashes, and you holler down the hall, 'Hey, reboot it.'"

Tom Van Vleck

#58. Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself
it is the occurring which is difficult.

Stephen Leacock

#59. I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

Pearl S. Buck

#60. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write.

Frank Herbert

#61. Authors like reading. Go figure. So it's not surprising that we sometimes bog down in the research stage of new writing projects.

Edward M. Lerner

#62. I am the entertainer, I've come to do my show You've heard my latest record, it's been on the radio It took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life It was a beautiful song but it ran too long If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit So they cut it down to 3:05.

Billy Joel

#63. I have to feel something emotionally on the story to be able to write for it. I turn things down if I don't feel I'm really right to tell that particular story.

Howard Shore

#64. I very rarely sit down with a guitar and try to write a song. I usually think about it a lot and then I'll try to re-create what was in my head at the time.

Sune Rose Wagner

#65. If I'm not writing about myself, then I sit down with people I really dig writing with and throw 'em out and see if something sticks. Their brain plus mine hopefully will make something interesting and cool and it will just snowball and we'll have a unique song by the end of it.

Kacey Musgraves

#66. There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What

Steven Pressfield

#67. When I write I try as far as possible to forget I'm writing it at all. I tell it down onto the page, as if I'm telling it to one person only, my best friend.

Michael Morpurgo

#68. As soon as a thought darts, I write it down.

Thomas Hobbes

#69. The changes are part of my writing process. When I write, I imagine scenes. I write things down. I take photographs. I do some casting. I rewrite. It's a permanent making or remaking.

Pawel Pawlikowski

#70. The eternal now," he said. "She wanted to catch it, remember? To pin it down. That was the point." "Of writing?" "Or suicide.

Ruth Ozeki

#71. It's so sad that no one writes down the things we go through, and even worse - no one will ever know about it, no one will ever see or hear about it, no one will ever be able to restore.

Javier Marias

#72. Writing is an act of discovery in which you peel back the layers of the story as you write it down.

Matt Forbeck

#73. I'm not worried about facing the Sacramento Queens. Write it down. Take a picture. I'm not going to talk about this all year. When I get back, there's going to be trouble.

Shaquille O'Neal

#74. Have you ever tried to vent your frustration by writing down swear words? Try it, it's just not the same.

Frank Tayell

#75. It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.

Anne Tyler

#76. Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it's lost.

Thomas Bernhard

#77. I do have a journal, that I write all my thoughts in every day. So that's kind of something. I also have a burn box where I write secrets down and put it in a box.

Miranda Cosgrove

#78. It's such a pleasure to write down splendid words - almost as though one were inventing them.

Rupert Hart-Davis

#79. I like the physical action of writing down by hand, and I don't just use it for writing my fiction.

Joe Haldeman

#80. Writing is not magic. It's a craft, a process, a set of steps. As with any process, things sometimes break down. Even in a good story, the writer runs into problems. So the act of writing always includes problem solving.

Roy Peter Clark

#81. I believe in the moment of things and fate and things happening for a reason, so I write things down and I trust it.

Ellie Goulding

#82. I got an idea: people like news why don't we write the news down on a piece of paper, and we'll gas them up and drive them to everyone's house. I mean, if you were going to say that now, it doesn't sound like a great idea, because there are other ways you can distribute the news.

Biz Stone

#83. Just do it. Get it down on the page. Work hard. And then let go. Ask yourself why you want to write. You have to be clear about that.

Yann Martel

#84. The secret to writing is to get your own pain - shout it out till it hurts your throat - weep it into your pillow - then write it down ...

John Geddes

#85. When you set a goal, write it down and then it's like making a promise to yourself.

Tony DiCicco

#86. 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

#87. People think my work is therapeutic. I don't see it that way. It's not like I'm saving money from a weekly therapy visit by writing down my life.

Neil LaBute

#88. 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

#89. The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapidly than that which sinks in advance of you.

Franz Kafka

#90. I would love to produce a film. I have written a script and am in the process of writing another, so maybe it will happen down the road. I would love to do a film in Africa.

Judi Shekoni

#91. Yesterday I went home with him and we did the usual things. I haven't the nerve to put them down, but I'd like to, because now when I'm writing it's already tomorrow and I'm afraid of getting to the end of yesterday. As long as I go on writing, yesterday is today and we are still together

Graham Greene

#92. I try not to be overly literal. When I'm writing songs, I write down a lot of words, and then I try to simplify it. I like to give people hints or words that make visual pictures for them.

Neko Case

#93. I remember telling my creative writing teacher that you never want to have a journal, because if you lose it, then someone's going to know all your secrets. And then she stopped using a journal, but I always write everything down ... Anytime I travel, I try and fill up notepads.

Garrett Hedlund

#94. Never write when you are not in the mood; when you are not feeling it. If the words do not flow freely, and come to you almost magically, then put it down and do not force yourself to write in the book, or it will reflect in your writing and it will be terribly obvious.

Wayne Hoss

#95. My own emotional health issues were bullying me during the time I was drafting that poem. It was a pressure I couldn't pin down or diagnose. And like many, if not most, writers I had the self-consciousness to recognize it made great conditions for writing.

Gregory Pardlo

#96. Whenever something good happens, write it down. Buy a special notebook ... and use it to list all the good in your life.

Peter McWilliams

#97. When you're writing fiction or poetry ... it really comes down to this: indifference to everything except what you're doing ... A young writer could do worse than follow the advice given in those lines.

Raymond Carver

#98. But the writing life, it turned out, was difficult. It wasn't like you could sit down and flip a switch and crank on the ventilation system. Sometimes it didn't work, and sometimes you couldn't even find the switch.

Jeanne Marie Laskas

#99. :They spend a quarter of their lives writing things down, a quarter finding what other people have written down, a quarter hiding what was written down, and a quarter making sure if it should have been written down and wasn't, it is now.:

Mercedes Lackey

#100. 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