Best brain & writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“When I hit a block, regardless of what I am writing, what the subject matter is, or what's going on in the plot, I go back and I read Pablo Neruda's poetry. I don't actually speak Spanish, so I read it translation. But I always go back to Neruda. I don't know why, but it calms me, calms my brain.”

Knows Writing Matter Speak Brain Subjects Calm Block Plot Translations Subject Matter

Author:Tea Obreht

“Writing is not something you can do or you can't. It's not even something that 'other people do' or 'for smart people only' or even 'for people who finished school and went to University'. Nonsense. Anyone can do it. But no-one can do it straight off the bat. Like plastering, brain surgery or assembling truck engines, you have to do a bit of training - get your hands dirty - and make some mistakes.”

People Writing Hands School Bits Can Do Mistake Brain Smart Training University Finished Dirty Nonsense Engines Bats Surgery Truck Smart People Assembling Brain Surgery Finished School

Author:Jasper Fforde

“Sometimes I write what I can't paint, and I paint what I can't write. I use a different part of the brain.”

Writing I Can Different Sometimes Use Brain Paint

Author:Erin Morgenstern

“The brain writes the autobiography of our species at the conscious level.”

Writing Levels Brain Conscious Species Autobiography

Author:David Brooks

“The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.”

Writing Ideas Stories Brain Let Me Obsession

Author:W. Somerset Maugham

“I was definitely looking for a reason to impose rules in the story during the writing process... a set of reasons that you could graph for why it's not chaos and anarchy - for why it has to be order, and why you need architects and an architectural brain to create the world of the dream for the subject to enter.”

World Needs Writing Reason Stories Dream Order Process Brain Subjects Chaos Anarchy Architect Writing Process Graphs

Author:Jonathan Nolan

“If you spend enough time reading or writing, you find a voice, but you also find certain tastes. You find certain writers who when they write, it makes your own brain voice like a tuning fork, and you just resonate with them. And when that happens, reading those writers ... becomes a source of unbelievable joy. It’s like eating candy for the soul. And I sometimes have a hard time understanding how people who don’t have that in their lives make it through the day.”

“Find a business mentor. Connect with others who are successful in other lines of business. Bounce ideas off them, pick their brains. Maybe they can re-write a proposal for you.”

Writing Ideas Lines Business Brain Successful Picks Mentor Proposal Bounce

Author:Cory Trepanier

“I think the celebrity author trend reflects, at least in part, the growing influence of marketing departments at publishing companies. The emphasis becomes on the easy sell, as opposed to finding the best quality and writing and illustrating. There are exceptions (I like John Lithgow's stuff, for example), but a lot of it is putrid, and the best of it is often ghostwritten. Save the ink. Save the trees. Save our brain cells.”

Thinking Writing Easy Stuff Brain Quality Company Growing Tree Influence Example Findings Sells Marketing Cells Department Exception Trends Publishing Emphasis Ink Brain Cells Illustrating

Author:Jabari Asim

“It's hard work, writing, you know. Honestly, a fight every day against your own limitations. You have to squeeze books out of your brain, you're constantly trying to solve challenges. I think most writers enjoy the feeling of having written something, rather than the process of writing it.”

Thinking Knows Writing Trying Book Hard Feelings Fighting Process Enjoy Challenges Brain Written Hard Work Solve Honestly Limitation

Author:Carlos Ruiz Zafon

“I've never had much attraction to writing fanfiction. I don't spend much time thinking about properties I don't own, as it's 'wasted' brain-cycles.”

Thinking Writing Book Brain Property Attraction Comic Cycles Comic Book

Author:Kieron Gillen

“The more familiar the world becomes, the less information your brain writes down, and the more quickly time seems to pass.”

World Writing Seems Brain Information Down And Familiar

Author:David Eagleman

“I do not suppose that anyone not a poet can realize the agony of creating a poem. Every nerve, even every muscle, seems strained to the breaking point. The poem will not be denied; to refuse to write it would be a greater torture. It tears its way out of the brain, splintering and breaking its passage, and leaves that organ in the state of a jelly-fish when the task is done.”

Way Writing States Done Seems Would Be Poetry Realizing Brain Greater Tears Poet Creating Tasks Fishes Refuse Torture Muscles Nerves Passages Denied Organs Agony Jelly Point Break

Author:Amy Lowell

“Writing directly from a feeling of anger or sadness is difficult, but if you distract part of your brain with word games, the ignored emotion often tiptoes in.”

Ifs Writing Feelings Games Difficult Emotion Brain Sadness Ignored Tiptoes

Author:Matthea Harvey

“For nearly a century the psychoanalysts have been writing op-ed pieces about the workings of a country they've never traveled to, a place that, like China, has been off-limits. Suddenly, the country has opened its borders and is crawling with foreign correspondents, neurobiologists are filing ten stories a week, filled with new data. These two groups of writers, however, don't seem to read each other's work. That's because the analysts are writing about a country they call Mind and the neuroscientists are reporting from a country they call Brain.”

Writing Mind Has Beens Two Country Stories Seems Brain Pieces Groups Week Century Ten Limits Filled China Data Borders Traveled Analysts Crawling Filing

Author:Susanna Kaysen

“I try not to get analytical in the writing process. I try to just kind of keep the flow from my brain to my hand as far as the pen is concerned and go with the moment and go with my guts.”

Writing Trying Kind Moments Hands Process Brain Concerned Flow Guts Pens Writing Process

Author:Quentin Tarantino

“Well into the 19th century there were pronouncements from just about every branch of science and medicine that reading, writing, and thinking were dangerous for women. Articles in the Lancet declared that women's brains would burst and their uteruses atrophy if they engaged in any form of rigorous thinking. The famous physician J.D. Kellogg insisted that novel reading was the greatest cause of uterine disease among young women and urged parents to protect their daughters from the dreaded consequences of print.”

“I also wear a hat or a very tightly pulled head tie when I write. I suppose I hope by doing that I will keep my brains from seeping out of my scalp and running in great gray blobs down my neck, into my ears, and over my face.”

Writing Running Faces Brain Ears Ties Necks Hats Gray

Author:Maya Angelou

“I had to write about realistic circumstances. Thats the way my brain works. And I think that gave me a sort of place in the field.”

Thinking Way Writing Brain Fields Circumstances Realistic

Author:Richard Matheson

“I'm partial to coffee shops, brain work, and poems on the page. I write after midnight. Sometimes, twisty syntax happens, and I surrender.”

Writing Sometimes Happens Brain Pages Coffee Surrender Shops Midnight Coffee Shop Syntax

Author:Marvin Bell

“Meg Pokrass writes like a brain looking for a body. Wonderful, dark, unforgiving.”

Writing Body Dark Brain Wonderful Unforgiving Meg

Author:Frederick Barthelme

“I've found is that by doing stand-up, I've actually learned how to combat depression. I don't have clinical, but I've definitely had my bouts with it. I just figured out that it's a choice. You're in control of your brain. When your brain is sending you bad information or bad thoughts, you can decide to go to the gym, or write a new joke - or if you're on the road, go to a ball game... something that's going to get the blood going. Or you can let those thoughts take you right down the rabbit hole.”

Ifs Writing Choices Found Games Brain Blood Information Jokes Balls Holes Gym Combat Rabbits Clinicals Ball Games Bad Thoughts Rabbit Holes

Author:Bill Burr

“All human states are organic brain states - happiness, sadness, fear, lust, dreaming, doing math problems and writing novels - and our brains are not static.”

Writing Humans States Problem Dream Brain Novel Sadness Math Lust Static Math Problems Happiness Sadness

Author:Siri Hustvedt

“For me, writing for younger audiences and writing for adults uses two different halves of my brain.”

Writing Two Different Use Brain Half Audience Adults

Author:Sara Shepard

“It's helpful for me to get ideas - the physical action of painting. Sometimes it frees up your writer brain. It's nice for me now that the writing has become a serious career that painting can become more like a hobby.”

Writing Ideas Sometimes Action Brain Careers Nice Painting Serious Helpful Hobbies

Author:Erin Morgenstern

“Music is supposed to be entertaining and if it touches you emotionally, so much the better. Sometimes you do it to save your own life, not anybody else's. That's why I write. I'm not trying to change anybody else's life or the world, I'm trying to keep from blowing my own brains out. That's the real point.”

Ifs World Writing Trying Real Sometimes My Own Brain Music Is Supposed To Be Entertaining Trying To Change

Author:Guy Clark

“My brain is dull, my sight is foul, I cannot write a verse, or read-- Then, Pallas, take away thine Owl, And let us have a lark instead.”

Writing Sex Brain Sight Dull Verses Foul Owl Larks

Book:Memorials: In 2 Vol

Source: Memorials: In 2 Vol

“install me in any profession Save this damn'd profession of writing, where one needs one's brains all the time.”

Needs Writing Brain Profession Damn

Book:Personae: The Shorter Poems (Revised Edition)

Source: Personae: The Shorter Poems (Revised Edition)

“Collaboration is just about finding people who are better than you at certain things and combining your powers. Like, if I'm not the strongest at playing piano, I'll work with someone who's really good at it and we'll combine both our brains to write a song.”

People Ifs Writing Certain Song Brain Findings Piano Strongest Collaboration Better Than You Combining Playing Piano

Author:Charlyne Yi

“Art and writing come from somewhere down around the lizard brain. It's a much more peculiar activity than we like to think it is. The problems arise when we try to domesticate the practice, to pretend that it's a normal human activity and that "everybody's creative." They're not.”

Thinking Writing Trying Humans Art Problem Brain Practice Creative Activity Normal Arise Peculiar Human Activity Lizards

Author:Dave Hickey

“Writing original songs is much, much harder (I think) because you only have yourself to conjure up EVERY single moment a listener is going to hear. It's a craft that goes directly from your brain to their ears. You can never be sure that what you're writing is gonna be good enough to keep a listener engaged and truly experience something. It's a shot in the dark.”

Thinking Writing Enough Moments Song Dark Brain Shots Ears Harder Originals Be Good Crafts Engaged Good Enough Listeners Single Mom

Author:Alex Goot

“I'm usually a panster and throw ideas down on computer the second they hit my brain. I even had to get off the treadmill to write down my ideas. It's a great place to 'zone out' and think about my plots and characters.”

Thinking Writing Ideas Character Brain Computer Zone Plot Treadmills

Author:Franny Armstrong

“When I am writing a novel, though, then it's usually three or four hours a day. Ideally, right after lunch until three or four, but sometimes picking up again around ten, going until a touch after midnight. I rarely write in the morning, unless I'm on deadline. I do like rewriting in the morning, though. Guess it's the way my brain's put together. Or, the way it's falling apart.”

Way Writing Sometimes Together Fall Three Hours Brain Morning Novel Four Ten Lunch Midnight Falling Apart Deadline Rewriting

Author:Stephen Graham Jones

“Part of my mind is working on how to end the thing while I'm going on. You need at least two brains to write.”

Needs Writing Mind Two Ends Brain Of My Mind

Author:Lydia Davis

“In a given scene I may know nothing more than how it's supposed to end, most of the time not even that. Scenes are improvised. A character does or says something, and with as much spontaneity and schizophrenia as I can muster, another character responds. In this way, everything I write is spontaneous chain reaction and I'm running around playing leapfrog in my brain trying to "be" all my people.”

People Knows Way Writing Trying May Doe I Can Ends Character Running Given Brain Scene Reactions Crafts Chains Spontaneous Spontaneity Schizophrenia Muster Chain Reactions

Author:Richard Price

“When you're on the set, and sometimes, because it's been so complex and the writers have been really writing, sometimes up until the last minute... And you kind of sit back; you separate yourself from your brain, and you say, let me see if you can do this. And that's the kind of challenge I like.”

Ifs Writing Kind Has Beens Sometimes Lasts Can Do Challenges Brain Minutes Let Me Complexes Last Minute

Author:Glenn Close

“The artwork had very little to do with the thought process, and the writing too, for that matter. What happens, happens, and it happens outside the brain.”

Writing Littles Matter Happens Process Brain Artwork Thought Process

Author:Jules Feiffer

“Writing is nearly always a matter of finding whatever your brain needs to trick it into being creative, and in my case, a tiny little bit of fact just seems to work.”

Needs Writing Littles Matter Facts Seems Bits Brain Cases Creative Findings Little Bit Tiny Tricks Be Creative

Author:Emma Donoghue

“I'm an actor, and, beyond that, the thing I do most compulsively is writing. So I come at it very much from this sense of character. I get interested in people. And I feel confident in my capacity to absorb and manifest the characteristics of people. I have a real auditory hang-up for dialogue; re-creating the way people talk really is an addiction in my brain.”

People Way Feels Writing Real Character Actors Brain Creating Capacity Addiction Dialogue Characteristics Manifest Hang Ups Auditory

Author:Edward Norton

“We all know the old expression, "I'll work my thoughts out on paper." There's something about the pen that focuses the brain in a way that nothing else does. That is why we must have more writing in the schools, more writing in all subjects, not just in English classes.”

Knows Way Writing Doe School Brain Class Subjects Expression Paper Pens My Thoughts English Class

Author:David McCullough

“In terms of brain development, musical performance is every bit as important educationally as reading or writing.”

Writing Important Reading Bits Term Brain Development Performances Musical Brain Development Reading Or Writing Musical Performance

Author:Oliver Sacks

“Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life experiences?...Of course, while in the tank you won't know that you're there; you'll think that it's all actually happening...Would you plug in?”

Source: Anarchy, state, and utopia

“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day ... you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don't think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Way Writing Happens Next Brain Worry Tired Stuck Best Way Subconscious Next Day Writer's Block

Author:Ernest Hemingway

“A leader whose speech is prepared by others is not a leader; he is just an empty and stupid bottle! Use your own ideas and your own brain; write your own speech, just like Gandhi, Churchill or Nehru! That is indeed a good ethics and a good honour!”

Writing Ideas Use Brain Leader Stupid Speech Ethics Empty Prepared Honour Bottles Write Your Own Nehru Good Ethics

Author:Mehmet Murat Ildan

“At times of crisis or distress, it's poems that people turn to. (Poetry) still has a power to speak to people's feelings, maybe in a way that fiction, because it works in a longer way, can't. There's a little bit of your brain that mourns and grieves that you're not writing poetry, but actually as long as I'm writing something, I'm happy.”

People Way Writing Littles Long Stills Feelings Turns Speak Bits Brain Fiction Little Bit Crisis Grieving Distress Mourn Writing Poetry Times Of Crisis

Author:Blake Morrison

“I'm not a method actor, I don't write my character's history or all those kinds of things. I'm more about the 90 percent of the brain that is subconscious. I like to just pick certain pieces, let it soak in, and then let it kind of emerge out.”

Writing Kind Character Certain Actors Brain Pieces Picks Percent Method Subconscious

Author:Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

“I was writing a story, 'The Artistic Career of Corky,' about two young men, Bertie Wooster and his friend Corky, getting into a lot of trouble, and neither of them had brains enough to get out of the trouble. I thought: Well, how can I get them out? And I thought: Suppose one of them had an omniscient valet?”

Men Writing Wells Two Enough Stories Young Brain Careers Trouble Artistic Young Man Omniscient Valet

Author:P. G. Wodehouse

“You're young forever when you write. Alfred Hitchcock directed until the day he died. As long as you don't have any dementia or Alzheimer's, if you have your All-Bran every day and clear yourself out, I think your brains are gonna be all right.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Long Young Brain Forever Clear Died Dementia Alzheimer Hitchcock Alzheimer's

Author:Mel Brooks

“I spend several years trying to get inside the brain and heart of my subjects, listening to the interior monologues in their letters, and when I have to bridge the chasms between the factual evidence, I try to make an intuitive leap through the eyes and motivation of the person I'm writing about.”

Writing Trying Years Heart Persons Eye Motivation Brain Subjects Listening Evidence Letters Bridges Leap Interiors Intuitive Through The Eyes Factual Monologues Chasms Heart And Brain

Author:Irving Stone

“Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.”

Writing Eye Chance Brain Visuals Paragraph Short Writing

Author:William Zinsser

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