Best five & writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Well, you just know, as a writer, I didn't really write one of the five best screenplays of the year. There were lots of brilliant screenplays; I was just one of the lucky ones who got nominated.”

Knows Writing Years Wells Five Lucky Brilliant Just One Screenplays

Author:Patrick Marber

“I don't write from dreams because I don't remember mine, but I had a fragment of an image left about twins, whose father was telling them how their lives were going to go for the next eight years. I wrote a scene about that, and then another and then another and then another, and after five months I had 732 pages.”

Writing Years Dream Remember Next Father Left Five Mines Months Scene Pages Eight Twins Fragments

Author:Tamora Pierce

“I've been writing since I'm five years old. I've been writing books since high school - junior high, high school. I write every single day. I never thought I'd be published.”

Writing Years Book School Five High School Five Years Juniors Writing A Book Five Year Olds Junior High High School Junior

Author:Karrine Steffans

“When you write a two thousand page history of the Second World War, the deportations and the concentration camps will take up five pages, and the gas chambers perhaps 20 lines.”

World Writing Two War Lines Five Thousand Pages War Of The Worlds Gas Concentration Camps Chamber Second World War Concentration Camp Deportation Gas Chambers

Author:Jean-Marie Le Pen

“The funny thing about me is I'm kind of schizophrenic, because after four or five nights in a row of going out to parties, I just have to be alone. I hate people and feel like they're keeping me from what I really want to do, like write a fabulous novel, which I probably never will.”

People Want Feels Writing Kind Night Hate Party Novel Five Four I Hate Going Out Fabulous Funny Things Hate People Schizophrenic I Hate People

Author:Bob Colacello

“When I was five years old, my parents gave me a magic chest. I learned to cast spells, although of a childish kind, before I had learned to read and write.”

Writing Years Kind Parent Five Magic Casts Five Years Chests Spells Five Year Olds

Author:Wolfgang Hildesheimer

“Writing books isn't a drastic departure from writing for the stage. I've always written in the long format, five, eight, 10-minute pieces rather than one-liners, so since writing books, the process hasn't changed much. A piece in my live routine can end up as part of one of my HBO specials, and it can also end up in one of the books.”

Writing Long Book Ends Process Five Pieces Written Minutes Stage Changed Eight Routine Writing A Book Departure Format One Liner Hbo Drastic

Author:George Carlin

“My first book took five years to write and I made $1,000 on it. The second took three years and I made $3,000. All this time I was a housewife being supported by a husband. I was very lucky.”

Writing Years Firsts Made Book Three Five Lucky Husband Five Years Three Years Housewife

Author:Judith Perelman Rossner

“I like things to be orderly. For seven years I ate at Bob's Big Boy. I would go at 2:30, after the lunch rush. I ate a chocolate shake and four, five, six, seven cups of coffee-with lots of sugar. And there's lots of sugar in that chocolate shake. It's a thick shake. In a silver goblet. I would get a rush from all this sugar, and I would get so many ideas! I would write them on these napkins. It was like I had a desk with paper. All I had to do was remember to bring my pen, but a waitress would give me one if I remembered to return it at the end of my stay. I got a lot of ideas at Bob's.”

“As it now stands, I Enoch appears to consist of the following five major divisions: (1) The Book of the Watchers (chaps. 1-36); (2) The Book of the Similitudes (chaps. 37-7l)-, (3) The Book of Astronomical Writings (chaps. 72-82); (4) The Book of Dream Visions (chaps. 83-90); and (5) The Book of the Epistle of Enoch (chaps. 91-107).”

Writing Book Dream Vision Five Majors Following Division Watchers Chaps

Author:Craig A. Evans

“I have a rule: before I can throw anything out, I have to write down five possible uses for it. This stretches my mind and keeps it nimble - just like stretching exercises do for my body.”

Writing Mind I Can Use Body Five Exercise Stretching Nimble

Author:Anna Olson

“I've never really suffered complete and utter writer's block, really. I equate it with sex: in the beginning of my career, I was writing five songs a week; now, I occasionally write a song. But it's an exciting moment when it happens!”

Writing Moments Happens Song Sex Careers Five Week Exciting Block Writer's Block

Author:Loudon Wainwright III

“My books have done extremely well, I know. But I don't honestly feel much different from when I began to write. I still think we have a long way to go. I suppose my name means more in Nigeria today than it did five years ago. But I feel the job that literature should do in our community has not even started. It's not yet part of the life of the nation. We are still at the beginning. It's a big beginning, because now we are catching the next generation in the schools. When I was their age, I had nothing to read that had any relevance to my own environment.”

Source: Conversations with Chinua Achebe

“Nearly all the writing of our time is likely to disappear in a hundred years. Certainly most readers - and nearly all critics - feel that [Kurt] Vonnegut started to repeat himself, to grow increasingly self-indulgent and meandering, and to sometimes just blather in his later work. But his books up to "Slaughterhouse-Five" do possess a distinctiveness that will insure some kind of permanence, if only in the history of the 1960s and of science fiction.”

“Students think they must write down the idea immediately, but I tell them if it's a good idea it'll be in your head in five minutes' time.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Ideas Five Minutes Students Good Ideas Five Minutes

Author:Judith Weir

“When I was a kid, the punishment I disliked the most was writing sentences. My mother loved to make me record my transgressions--always a minimum of five hundred times--and she even bought special spiral notebooks for me to fill up.... No matter how many notebooks I went through, there was always another one waiting in the kitchen drawer.”

Writing Matter Kids Mother Waiting Records Five Special Hundred Sentences Punishment Kitchen Minimum Notebook Drawers Spirals Transgression

Book:Learning to Sing: Hearing the Music in Your Life

Source: Learning to Sing: Hearing the Music in Your Life

“Advertising is utterly unprofitable, and I could prove it to you in one week. End an ad with an offer to pay five dollars to anyone who writes you that he read the ad through. The scarcity of replies will amaze you.”

Writing Ends Pay Five Week Offers Prove Dollars Advertising Ads Prove It Scarcity Week End

Book:Scientific Advertising

Source: Scientific Advertising

“I write short stories. They may appear big in size, but when you consider it, they're four or five novels in one... In return for picking up one of my books, I'm trying to give them value for their money... the goal of writing any book is to create the illusion that what you are reading is reality and you're part of it.”

Giving Writing Trying May Book Stories Bigs Reality Values Reading Goal Novel Five Four Return Illusion Size Short Story

Author:James Clavell

“By the time you write the last page you have done half the book. The other half tends to get done in about five weeks; I do several drafts, very, very furiously rewriting. I literally do more or less nothing else and I stick with it and go through it and I begin to hate it.”

Writing Book Done Lasts Hate Half Five Week Pages Sticks Other Half Rewriting

Author:Terry Pratchett

“I write four or five a books a year. That means that I usually have one on the go. I am fortunate in being able to write quickly - 1000 words an hour.”

Writing Years Mean Book Able Hours Five Four Fortunate

Author:Alexander McCall Smith

“(Songwriting) It's a gift. It all comes from somewhere. I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn't lived long enough to experience.”

Writing Years Long Enough Play Young Five Four Six Instruments Eight Songwriting Writing Poems

Author:Willie Nelson

“In order to even begin to learn how to play his instrument, it takes the guitarist weeks to build calluses on his fingertips; it takes the saxophonist months to strengthen his lip so that he might play his instrument for only a five-minute stretch; it can take the pianist years to develop dual hand and multiple finger coordination. Why do writers assume they can just “write” with no training whatsoever-and then expect, on their first attempt, to be published internationally? What makes them think they're so much inherently greater, need so much less training than any other artists?”

Source: The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile

“As somebody who's been writing about this subject for getting on twenty years now, it's astonishing how the climate has changed in the last five years.”

Writing Years Lasts Literature Five Subjects Changed Twenties Climate Five Years Astonishing Last Five Years

Author:Anthony Holden

“It might be a good idea to have government totally by the people - that each person takes four or five hours of the week doing some kind of government job - in other words, along with what you do you also help maintain the government so no one person has total control - I might go down to an office for four hours and do whatever I'm capable of doing - writing out receipts for food distribution in a certain area - but it's all actually a monstrous secretarial job and that's all I think it should be.”

People Thinking Should Writing Kind Persons Ideas Helping Government Might Jobs Certain Hours Five Four Week Office Capable Areas Good Ideas Distribution Monstrous Receipts Government Jobs

Author:Grace Slick

“When I feel that I'm going to write a detective story, I buy a five pound box of chocolates and a ream of paper. When the candy is all gone and the paper all used up, I know that the book is long enough.”

Knows Feels Writing Long Book Enough Stories Used Gone Five Paper Boxes Pounds Chocolate Candy Detectives Detective Stories Box Of Chocolates

Author:Carolyn Wells

“if you don't keep and guard and mature your force, and above all, have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing things not much better than you did five years ago. ... you must write to the human heart, the great consciousness that all humanity goes to make up. Otherwise what might be strength in a writer is only crudeness, and what might be insight is only observation; sentimemnt falls to sentimentality - you can write about life, but never write life itself.”

Ifs Writing Years Humans Heart Might Humanity Fall Force Perfect Consciousness Five Quiet Years Ago Insight Observation Five Years Mature Human Heart Better Than You Sentimentality

Author:Sarah Orne Jewett

“My first notebook was a Big Five tablet, given to me [at age five] by my mother with the sensible suggestion that I stop whining and learn to amuse myself by writing down my thoughts.”

Writing Firsts Bigs Age Mother Given Five Sensible Suggestions My Thoughts Notebook Whining Tablets Stop Whining

Book:We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction

Source: We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction

“If you let anything infringe on your writing time, it will. And you won't get the writing done. Taking one day off can cost me five days of getting back in the mood. Going out to lunch can cost me anywhere from five hours to three days. And for me it's not worth it. For my own sense of well-being I have to finish my work before I can play.”

Ifs Writing Wells I Can Done Play Three Hours My Own Five One Day Cost Mood Well Being Lunch Going Out Worth It Days Off Not Worth It

Author:Danielle Steel

“At the age of thirty-five, I have just begun to become the kind of person who could understand the kind of book I would want to write.”

Want Writing Kind Persons Book Age Five Thirty

Author:Ingrid Bengis

“I always loved writing songs - writing for myself and demo-ing songs, really with no intention of ever letting anyone else hear them. Finally the Foo Fighters stuff happened when I just went to the studio down the street from my house and recorded some stuff in about five or six days, and all these people wanted to release it as an album. I wanted to release it on my own, with no photos and no names on it.”

People Writing Wanted Song House Names Stuff My Own Five Happened Streets Six Intention Albums Studios Release Fighter Writing Songs Demos Foo Fighters

Author:Dave Grohl

“I feel successful when the writing goes well. This lasts five minutes. Once, when I was number one on the bestseller list, I also felt successful. That lasted three minutes.”

Feels Writing Wells Lasts Three Felt Difficult Numbers Successful Five Minutes Lists Five Minutes Difficult Days

Author:Jacqueline Briskin

“Im like any other composer. If you give me five years to write a symphony, Im still going to be asking for more time two days before its due.”

Ifs Giving Writing Years Stills Two Five Give Me Asking Dues Five Years More Time Composer Symphony Two Days

Author:Darren Criss

“I always loved putting on shows - when you're the youngest of seven and five are older sisters, you've got to get noticed somehow! I did puppet shows and magic shows... even ventriloquism. My doll's name was 'Dan,' and I used to write these scripts, and my schoolmate hid under the table and supplied Dan's voice.”

Writing Shows Used Names Voice Five Magic Tables Seven Scripts Dolls Puppets Older Sister Magic Show Ventriloquism Puppet Shows Schoolmates

Author:David Wenham

“I write in the mornings, two or three hours every day, and then at least four times a week I play in a duplicate game at a bridge club. I try to go to tournaments three, four, or five times a year.”

Writing Trying Years Two Play Three Games Hours Morning Five Four Week Clubs Bridges Tournaments Duplicate

Author:Louis Sachar

“Mr. Fulbright hasn't said anything new or interesting or clever in five years; his intellectual well dried up the day after Walter Lippmann stopped writing his regular column.”

Writing Years Wells Said Interesting Five Intellectual Clever Five Years American Politics Columns

Book:The real Spiro Agnew: commonsense quotations of a household word

Source: The real Spiro Agnew: commonsense quotations of a household word

“Most writers write too much. I have the exact opposite problem. I feel I could write almost anything in a paragraph. I have a natural ability to condense, and so I often think, "Are you kidding me? Five thousand words? How am I gonna make 5,000 words out of that?"”

Thinking Feels Writing Problem Natural Ability Five Too Much Thousand Opposites Paragraph Natural Ability

Author:Fran Lebowitz

“Stand-up life is really hard. At one point, I got so paralyzed I could write five screenplays before I could write three jokes for stand-up. Later, I've finally allowed myself to relax quite a bit, to think I can do it because I've done it in the past. The pressure to come up with the material is the same but the anxiety about whether I can do it is gone.”

Thinking Writing I Can Hard Done Past Life Is Three Bits Can Do Gone Five Materials Anxiety Jokes Pressure Come Up Relax Screenplays I Can Do It Paralyzed

Author:Steve Martin

“I've also learned to only write songs and melodies that really work for my voice and that I won't have issues doing live. Because you can get really, really comfortable in the comping process: out of five takes, maybe one of those high notes that you struggled to do, nailed it, and then live you're having that challenge of really having to recreate that.”

Writing Song Process Voice Challenges Issues Five Comfortable Notes Melody Get Real High Notes

Author:Solange Knowles

“A novelist writes a novel, and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and personal response, the communal nature of the audience is like having five hundred people read your novel and respond to it at the same time. I find that thrilling.”

People Writing May Reading Novel Audience Five Hundred Response Novelists Solitary Thrilling

Author:August Wilson

“First of all, I've been having a wonderful run of luck with cover albums, songs I didn't write. I had five pop cover albums and two Christmas albums, and they were all very successful.”

Writing Firsts Two Running Song Successful Five Wonderful Luck Albums Pops

Author:Barry Manilow

“My female writers have always been my backbone. I had a writing room of six women for five years so I know what women do. Cultivated by me, by the way!”

Knows Way Writing Years Rooms Five Six Female Five Years Backbone Female Writers

Author:Michael Patrick King

“A singer can quit once he or she has made ten great songs; a director can finish once he or she has made five amazing films; a writer just needs to write three great books.”

Needs Writing Made Book Film Song Three Five Directors Ten Singers Quitting Great Book

Author:Alber Elbaz

“Stop in the middle of a sentence, leaving a rough edge for you to start from the nest day - that way, you can write three or five words without being “creative” and before you know it, you're writing.”

Knows Way Writing Three Creative Five Middle Leaving Edges Sentences Rough Be Creative Nests Rough Edges

Author:Cory Doctorow

“My failure, during the first five or six years of my art training, to get set in the right direction, and the disappointment which it caused me, drove me the more persistently into writing as an alternative.”

Writing Years Firsts Art Five Six Training Disappointment Alternatives Right Direction

Author:Laurence Housman

“From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.”

Should Writing Book Ideas Age Consciousness Five Four Grew Six Grew Up Should Have Twenties Down And Settling Abandon Sooner Or Later True Nature Seventeen Settling Down

Book:A Collection of Essays

Source: A Collection of Essays

“There are a lot of composers who were fantastic, but I challenge them to write a record that you could play five times a day for two months on the radio, songs that people will want to dance to on a Saturday night.”

People Want Writing Two Play Night Song Challenges Records Five Months Radio Fantastic Composer Saturday Saturday Night Two Months

Author:Robert Wyatt

“I don't really think that writers, even great writers, are prophets, or sages, or Messiah-like figures; writing is a lonely, sedentary occupation and a touch of megalomania can be comforting around five on a November afternoon when you haven't seen anybody all day.”

Thinking Writing Five Havens Figures Lonely Prophet Occupation Afternoon Sage Comforting November Messiah Great Writers Sedentary Megalomania

Book:Shaking a Leg: Journalism and Writings

Source: Shaking a Leg: Journalism and Writings

“One of the more popular activities was “Talk-O-Matic”. Five people at a time could write messages, and read each other's messages, on the same screen. Today, Internet chat rooms work on the same principle. One of the remarkable new features of this page was that you could log in with an invented name, and pretend you were anyone you wanted - any name, any age, any gender. One favorite trick was to log in using the name of someone else already logged into the page, simply to confuse everyone else.”

People Writing Age Today Wanted Names Rooms Principles Five Internet Activity Messages Pages Gender Screens Tricks Features Remarkable

Author:Guy Consolmagno

“Don't try to write too much in a single session. One thousand words a day is quite enough. Stop after about four or five hours.”

Writing Trying Enough Hours Five Too Much Four Thousand Session

Author:Robert Harris

“For more than twenty-five years my mind had been deeply troubled by the fact that these mechanical and scientific achievements ofman had outrun his intellectual and spiritual power. ...Throughout the Second World War this terrible problem hung in the back of my mind. As I write these words the problem and the danger are as threatening as ever. We hope our nation will survive, but in its effort to survive will it transform itself intellectually and spiritually into the image of the thing against which we fought?”

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