Writing Material Quotes

#1. Rejection is a part of any man's life. If you can't accept and move past rejection, or at least use it as writing material - you're not a real man.
-Master Jiraiya

Masashi Kishimoto

#2. When you wrote a song way back in the day, you were writing material to play live. And you would buy the CD at the shows if you like the show. You may not listen to the CD, you might just throw it in the back of your car and let it warp in the sun. The main thing was you saw the song at the show.

Travis Morrison

#3. I do lots of crowd work in my set, because I enjoy writing material through riffing and conversation.

Chris Hardwick

#4. If I had to give up everything else and keep just one aspect of the job, I'd have to keep writing because I love it. Yes, I enjoy performing, too. But I couldn't give up writing material.

Colin Quinn

#5. Enthusiasm is big. When I write a book, it's a three-year commitment. Toward the end, I'm writing seven days a week, and it's exhausting but thrilling. The only hope is to have some real enthusiasm for the book ... Above all, you need some strong emotional or personal connection to your material.

Nathaniel Philbrick

#6. The writing is always the easy part, provided I can get the good material. It's the getting of the good material that's a challenge.

Mary Roach

#7. An author who rewrites his own work must essentially be two people. One is the free flowing uncritical writer who creates the bulk of the material - the other is the extremely critical editor whose aim it is to make the book as good as it can become.

Gudjon Bergmann

#8. Having instant feedback on twitter to research material I'm considering is an enormous help.

Sara Sheridan

#9. Archive material is vital to the writer of historical fiction.

Sara Sheridan

#10. You write some material, go up on stage and try it out; go back home and throw it in the trash can. And the next day do it again.

Felipe Esparza

#11. Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.

Anne Lamott

#12. To tell a story is always to translate the raw material into a specific shape, to select out of the boundless potential facts those that seem salient.

Rebecca Solnit

#13. It's fun to deliver material on live TV because it's more off-the-cuff, but I like writing better. You really can measure the joke, think an extra second and nail the right reference.

Willie Geist

#14. All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely different medium.

John Banville

#15. In the 80s, in the cover band I was in, we'd slip in original material. If you didn't say anything about it, people just didn't care. Sometimes they'd ask where that came from and you'd tell them, but you still had to play a bunch of Willie, Waylon, and Merle.

Andy Wilkinson

#16. The ideas for my books come about in two ways. There can be an intellectual idea that seems to be the reason for writing the book. The other motive is unconscious. There is something deeply psychological and emotional that draws me to the material in the first place.

Jeffrey Eugenides

#17. When your words enter the material world in the form of ink or on screen, you are immediately afforded the opportunity to judge their worth.

Chris Matakas

#18. I'm always writing. It's kind of a curse: You never stop. But I need isolation to write. So the real meat of the material comes when I'm off the road.

Taylor Momsen

#19. Something like going to get the newspaper can increase your writing efficiency by taking you away from the material. When I'm doing other things, writing stuff will be swirling around in my head, and sometimes I'll see a new way into the material.

Nathaniel Philbrick

#20. My sincerest gratitude to every ass hole, horrible boss, and worthless piece of shit I've ever met for giving me new and endless material to work with and a way to earn a living exposing you.

Crystal Woods

#21. One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

William Zinsser

#22. I gave up the notion of writing the life of Joan of Arc, as I found that there was absolutely no new material to be gleaned on her history - in fact, she had been thrashed out.

Sabine Baring-Gould

#23. The material's out there, a calm lake waiting for us to dive in.

Beverly Lowry

#24. One does not travel, any more than one falls in love, to collect material. It is simply part of one's life ...

Evelyn Waugh

#25. Most of the time I was in the Northeast, I lived in the country, and I think that helped me to discover my material for writing.

Bobbie Ann Mason

#26. So that's why one of my rules of parody writing is that it's gotta be funny regardless of whether you know the source material. It has to work on its own merit.

Al Yankovic

#27. Sometimes a fresh perspective is all you need to get a second wind on the revision process. Try viewing your material on a different medium; it will shed a new light on the inconsistencies in the dark.

V.S. Watson

#28. My first TV job was on an episode of 'Hannah Montana' ... Since then, I've been fortunate to end up on shows that are just such a high quality, where the writing and material is incredible.

Alison Brie

#29. One would think that in writing about literary men and matters there would be no difficulty in finding a title for one's essay, or that any embarrassment which might arise would be from excess of material. I find this, however, far from being the case.

James Payn

#30. If you have some other profession that allows you your evenings or weekends, terrific, stick with that. Having a profession other than writing also has the potential side benefit of providing you with material, something to write about.

Debra Dean

#31. I learned as a young man that I don't write jokes, but that I can deliver more mundane material and get a laugh. I call myself a humorist.

Nick Offerman

#32. When you're in love with the work, the energy comes more naturally. You want to wake up in the morning to write more material, or to go on stage and give every shred of emotion you have.

Matthew Hussey

#33. For a novelist, the gaps in a story are as intriguing as material that still exists.

Sara Sheridan

#34. Artists, composers and writers...are bent upon capturing and reining in the insights of a fugitive imagination, always inclined to shoot off into the distance, before they can get away, and on bringing them back into the immediacy of material engagement. Like hunters, they too are dream-catchers.

Tim Ingold

#35. In writing fiction, I can be free. I can use my life. The raw material is my experiences.

Miriam Toews

#36. You will have to write and put away or burn a lot of material before you are comfortable in this medium. You might as well start now and get the work done. For I believe that eventually quantity will make for quality.

Ray Bradbury

#37. When I just write something, it's usually because I love it, I love the material, but I feel like I really need a creative partner to crack it. And I certainly need and have a lot of creative partners as a director.

Nicholas Stoller

#38. Do you know what every instructor in the world wants from you? He or she really, really wants you to do two things: Demonstrate that you have understood the course material and write intelligently about your subject.

Scribendi

#39. The only way to build a fan base is to have a lot of material out there for readers to find. You can't manufacture a fan base. You create it, one story at a time.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

#40. Working as a musician, I have to constantly generate new material, so school keeps me sharp. Reading and writing all the time helps me to be a better songwriter.

Kate Voegele

#41. The movies that work are the ones in which somebody very smart figured out how to take all the thematic material, all the character material, all the filigree, all the beautiful writing, and put it into a story.

Scott Rudin

#42. In general, each form is a relief from the other forms. I can't write a novel after a novel. I just use up all the material each time, and I need to rest.

Rick Moody

#43. I might be writing what people expect me to write, writing from that place where I might be ruled by economic considerations. To overcome that, I started working with my dreams, because I'm not so censored when I use dream material.

Kathy Acker

#44. Creative Writing was not a form of psychotherapy, in ways both sublime and ridiculuous, it clearly was, precisely that.

A.S. Byatt

#45. Giving these students, teenagers, any form of power over the use of their own words, allowing them to turn everyday raw material into some form of beauty, is a gift beyond measure.

Gloria Ng

#46. I have the feeling it will influence my future writing to the extent that without any material worries I could develop a greater ease, even lightheartedness, in my writing.

Elfriede Jelinek

#47. I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think about these things when I'm writing. I'm just thinking about telling a story and developing my characters.

Roger Zelazny

#48. I just like to go where the material is, whether that's TV, or movies, or the stage. As long as it's great writing, it's pretty much something I can't resist.

Sarah Shahi

#49. Right now we're in the process of writing new material for a new record.

Dave Lombardo

#50. I travel whenever I can - every couple of years if it is possible. I always say I'm not to write books on the countries I visit, but somehow I always seem to use material I can found in these countries in my books.

Ursula Torday

#51. I like to think that I'm one of the few people in public life who write their own material. I write every word. And I really enjoy writing - especially my political commentary.

Ed Koch

#52. I like writing my own material - I'm pretty good at it.

Jackee Harry

#53. Analyze This is a good movie because Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal are really good. But without the material to put on the play, of course, they couldn't be good. For me, it starts with the writing.

Harold Ramis

#54. We expect to keep our writing sessions going until late spring, then to play some new material in a few secret club dates. The record will likely take a long time and may not surface until 1999!

Adrian Belew

#55. Students need to make their own choices about reading material and writing topics.

Donalyn Miller

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

Kaci Brown

#57. In our age, when technology is gaining control over life, when material well-being is considered the most important goal, when the influence of religion has been weakened everywhere in the world, a special responsibility lies upon the writer.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#58. The Pleasure Seekers eventually turned into Cradle, when we started writing our own material. My younger sister Nancy was brought in as singer and I kind of stepped aside as main lead singer and concentrated on my instrument.

Suzi Quatro

#59. Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classed as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000. But it would not be a very good way of making a living.

Mark Haddon

#60. In fact, writing, especially writing autobiographical works, and this is actually the fourth time I've done it, each time I've done it I've felt deeply immersed in the material as I'm doing it, and then it's over and everything is the same.

Paul Auster

#61. I got done writing Ports of Call and suddenly realized I have far too much material for the book.

Jack Vance

#62. Research material can turn up anywhere - in a dusty old letter in an archive, a journal or some old photographs you find in a charity shop.

Sara Sheridan

#63. My background is really being a writer's actor - that seems to be the way I work best, bringing out the best of writing. There's a whole range of acting skills, and some people can be astonishing with very poor material. That's not me; my skill is essentially unlocking the writing.

Lindsay Duncan

#64. I was on cruise control from '85 to '95, and it was my fault. There were a lot of self-inflicted wounds, when I was not doing any original material. I wasn't directing. I wasn't writing. That's not who I am.

Sylvester Stallone

#65. But today, something begins to shift. I see that there might be some way I can take the raw material of my life and transform it into something that has order and structure. I can make sense of what, until now, has been senseless.

Dani Shapiro

#66. Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredible.

C.S. Lewis

#67. Search your own life for the story only you can tell. The best thing about writing from life is that you can be sure of using original material. And no research is needed beyond the time you spend looking deep inside your own heart.

Elizabeth Held Forsyth

#68. Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

Willa Cather

#69. I never really write the jokes. I just sit down over a week or two and try to figure out what I want to talk about. Once I narrow that down, then I start working on the material, like "How do I make this stuff funny?"

Chris Rock

#70. I began to see that the short texts I was writing were poster material.

Jenny Holzer

#71. I don't spend as much time drawing as I do writing and reading. That's the really work-intensive part. And by the time I have enough material, it's often way past due time to put the comic up, and I'm already behind schedule, and I have to kind of rush it.

Kate Beaton

#72. I use improvisation as a writing tool to help produce material that goes into a script, but a well-crafted script shouldn't sound scripted, and oftentimes people confuse something that looks like improvisation for what is actually a very well-written script that is well-acted.

Steve Coogan

#73. Writing is a consequence of having been 'haunted' by material. Why this is, no one knows.

Joyce Carol Oates

#74. When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

#75. I've been writing a lot of country music again. I've written some bluegrass material. I'm having a good time doing that.

Dan Fogelberg

#76. Everything is material for the seed of happiness, if you look into it with inquisitiveness and curiosity. The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment. There always is the potential to create an environment of blame -or one that is conducive to loving-kindness.

Pema Chodron

#77. What I think is important about essayists - about the essay, as opposed to a lot of personal writing that kind of finds its way into public view - is that the material really has to be presented in a processed way.

Meghan Daum

#78. Awake and asleep the novel is with you, dogging your footsteps. Strange formless bits of material float out from the ether about you and attach themselves to the main body of the story as though they had hung suspended in air for years, waiting.

Edna Ferber

#79. We have the crime of the century every six months. So for people like me who enjoy, you know, taking these stories and writing about them, the material is endless.

John Grisham

#80. Don't annoy your readers by over-explaining--by telling them something they already know or can figure out. Try not to use words like "surprisingly," "predictably" and "of course," which put a value on a fact before the reader encounters the fact. Trust your material.

William Zinsser

#81. Whether I'm writing solo stuff, electronic stuff, or material for Motley, I just write to write. I come up with it and put things in different piles.

Tommy Lee

#82. Whether she was writing to tell her followers about a local cheesemaker, a new farm-to-table restaurant, or what to do with an exotic heirloom fruit that was organically produced and newly marketed, she spent hours each day scouring Philadelphia and the outlying towns for material.

Barbara Delinsky

#83. Archive material is a fabulous starting point - individual documents are like signposted roads, heading to a variety of intriguing possibilities.

Sara Sheridan

#84. I found I'm quite happy working on a sentence for an hour or more, searching for the right phrase, the right word. I compare it to the work of a stone cutter - chipping away at the raw material until it's just right, or as right as you can get it.

Harriet Doerr

#85. 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

#86. I write because I'm a writer. It is rather like cooking: to make something out of the raw material at hand.

Sybille Bedford

#87. I loathe writing autobiographical material because if it's dull no-one should have to read it anyway, and if it's interesting I should be using it for a story.

Shirley Jackson

#88. I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.

Alexander Payne

#89. I began writing fiction when I started running out of material in my own life.

Jen Lancaster

#90. That's what happens with writing. Ingredients bubble and cook. Material becomes substance.

Alex Haley

#91. I am only a little pencil in the hand of our Lord. He may cut or sharpen the pencil. He may write or draw whatever and whenever he wants. If the writing or drawing is good, we do not honor the pencil or the material that is used, but rather the one who used it.

Mother Teresa

#92. A paucity of material can open up just as many possibilities.

Sara Sheridan

#93. Machiavelli, however, took his bearings from people as they are. He defined the political project as making the best of this flawed material. He knew (in words Kant would write almost three centuries later) that nothing straight would be made from the crooked timber of humanity.

George Will

#94. It takes so long to write a script, thinking to yourself, "Am I wasting my time? Am I putting everything into this thing that maybe just won't ever exist?" I always think, God, acting is so much easier. At least for acting you have the source material already.

Jason Schwartzman

#95. Sometime really good writing does you a disservice as an actor. Because you can get lazy. It's doing a lot of the work for you. I guess that's good. But at the same time with material that's not so good, you have to be more inventive, because no thought has been applied to it.

Meryl Streep

#96. The tales are quite hard to remember and I found that going back to it between bouts of writing fiction, I was having to retrace my steps quite a lot, because the stories are very intricate and the material is elusive, and possibly with age, my memory is not as malleable as it used to be.

Marina Warner

#97. I love music that has good catchy choruses and fits into many different genres ... I like real artists, that write their own material and are great performers.

Perez Hilton

#98. If there is any difficulty in what I write, it is because of the material I use. The thought is always simple.

James Joyce

#99. What we need is more women writers, writing for older women. There are some actresses who have production companies and create their own material, and I truly admire that.

Kathleen Turner

#100. I think that, for physicians who want to become writers, they have the material, the smarts, they have the logic, they know the stories; it's just a matter of being able to connect with their emotional sides - that's the key to writing good fiction.

Tess Gerritsen