Best four & writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too - eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko's, Fatburger, Subway - I was a sandwich artist - and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.”

People Writing Years Firsts Jobs Artist Song Half Four Claims Studios Sandwiches Eleven Writing Songs Subway Half A Year Processors

Author:Frank Ocean

“I love writing in longhand. Writing in longhand, I think, is a marvelous thing to do for a writer these days. If you have a notebook and a nice pen you can go off somewhere, you can write that's solar powered. You can drop it or get it wet and pretty much all of your work will continue to be there. If you suddenly decide to look up a word or check a reference you will not look up four hours later, blinking, finding yourself somehow in the middle of an Ebay auction you never had any plans to be part of.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Looks Hours Four Nice Plans Middle Findings Checks These Days Things To Do Look Up Finding Yourself Pens Wet Marvelous Notebook Auctions Ebay Marvelous Things

Author:Neil Gaiman

“It's hard for children's authors to be accepted when they try to write adult books. J.K. Rowling is the exception because people are so eager to read anything by her, but it took Judy Blume three or four tries before she had a success.”

People Writing Trying Children Book Hard Three Four Adults Accepted Exception

Author:R. L. Stine

“I used to be a pre-industrial writer: thousands of words in a spurt and then a few days off. But as I get older, I've switched to a mode best described as 'slow and steady wins the race.' Basically, I write during the same four hours every day, after breakfast and the all-important coffee, generally in the same room and wearing the same pajamas.”

Writing Important Used Winning Hours Rooms Race Four Coffee Used To Be Breakfast Steady Days Off Pajamas Slow And Steady

Author:Scott Westerfeld

“When the babies were very young, I found it difficult to write. I told myself each time that it would be different, I was used to it now, but with every child, for the first four months, I would accomplish nothing.”

Writing Firsts Children Different Would Be Young Used Found Difficult Four Baby Months Accomplish Accomplish Nothing

Author:Ayelet Waldman

“But I've been at writing long enough now to know that every three or four books I have to start a new direction.”

Knows Writing Long Book Enough Three Four New Directions

Author:Daniel Woodrell

“I write four books a year. I'm very fortunate that I write quickly; around 3,500 words a day. Being strict about delineating my writing time and personal life, as well as keeping distractions at bay, is the only way I can accomplish this.”

Way Writing Years Wells I Can Book Four Accomplish Fortunate Distraction Strict Personal Life

Author:Alexander McCall Smith

“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

“The four great motives for writing prose are sheer egoism, esthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose.”

Writing Political Purpose Four Historical Enthusiasm Impulse Motive Prose Sheer Egoism

Author:George Orwell

“Of every four words I write, I strike out three.”

Writing Three Four Strikes Editing

Author:Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

“I seem to write an opera about every 20 years; if you live long enough you can write four operas. I finished my third in 1970.”

Ifs Writing Years Long Enough Seems Four Thirds Finished Opera

Author:Virgil Thomson

“everyone who is human has something to express. Try not expressing yourself for twenty-four hours and see what happens. You will nearly burst. You will want to write a long letter, or draw a picture, or sing, or make a dress or a garden.”

Want Writing Trying Humans Long Happens Humanity Hours Four Communication Draws Garden Letters Twenties Dresses Express Yourself

Book:If You Want to Write

Source: If You Want to Write

“Over the next four days, I want you to write about your deepest emotions and thoughts about the most upsetting experience in your life. Really let go and explore your feelings and thoughts about it. In your writing, you might tie this experience to your childhood, your relationship with your parents, people you have loved or love now or even your career. How is this experience related to who you would like to become, who you have been in the past, or who you are now?.”

People Want Writing Has Beens Feelings Might Past Next Parent Emotion Careers Four Childhood Letting Go Who You Are Upset Your Children Ties Related Our Relationship I Want You

Author:James W. Pennebaker

“[Her] love and tenderness ... gave me the faith in love that enabled me to face my dead at last and write this play-write it with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted Tyrones.”

Love Writing Play Lasts Faces Understanding Four Pity Tenderness Romantic Love Sweet Love Faith In Love

Author:Eugene O'Neill

“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.”

“I failed to get into drama school, and my best friend told me I should do stand-up instead. I was always doing gags and voices, so he booked a gig for me without telling me. I only had four days to write it. I did a seven-minute set; the first four minutes were terrible, but the last two were amazing.”

Should Writing Firsts Two School Lasts Voice Four Minutes Terrible Drama Seven My Best Friend Gigs Gags

Author:Marcus Brigstocke

“Writing is 90% procrastination. It is a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write.”

Writing Matter Morning Four Procrastination Writer's Block Infomercials

Author:Paul Rudnick

“My best time to write is right after coffee and breakfast - four eggs because, full disclosure: I'm really a komodo dragon - and that's because then I'm energized but not so awake that the critical voice clicks on, the voice that sometimes says, "Don't write that," or "Man, that sentence is terrible - you should give up and go pet the cats."”

Men Giving Should Writing Sometimes Voice Four Terrible Giving Up Cat Critical Sentences Coffee Awake Pet Dragons Eggs Breakfast Clicks Best Times Disclosure

Author:Jeff VanderMeer

“My dad once told me: no matter what anyone says or writes, really, none of those people have to hit your four- foot putt.You have to go do it yourself.”

People Writing Matter Four Feet Dad No Matter What My Dad Do It Yourself

Author:Tiger Woods

“When you first sit down to write the first song, until you've maybe got three or four under your belt, it's always, to me, like a mountain to climb. You look at that one blank piece of paper and you think, `God, how many songs do I have to write here?' It always feels like pressure.”

Thinking Feels Writing Firsts Looks Song Three Pieces Four Mountain Paper Pressure Climbs Blank Belts

Author:Martin Gore

“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.”

“My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him. I had some sort of gift and when it came time to try to find a publisher I had a little bit of an "in" because I had his agent I could turn to, to at least read my initial offerings when I was about 20. But the only problem was that they were just awful, they were just terrible stories and my agent, who ended up being my agent, was very, very sweet about it, but it took about four years until I actually had something worth trying to sell.”

“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

“There's that lovely thing for the first month or two of writing a new book: OK, I don't know what that character's going to do, but we'll find out later. After about three or four months you come to that bit where you've got to put some plot in before it's too late, and you have to go back and start inserting plot, and, ooh, I've left out the literature, OK, lets put some in.”

Knows Writing Firsts Two Book Character Three Literature Left Bits Four Months Late Lovely Too Late Plot Left Out New Books Lovely Things Before It's Too Late

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

“I only choose to write about people who are alive, are extremely powerful and as such have influenced our lives. I try to go behind their constructed myths to find the humanity of the person. It takes me about four years on every book and requires hundreds of interviews so I choose people whose lives I respect and achievements are worth recording.”

People Writing Trying Years Persons Book Humanity Powerful Behinds Four Our Lives Alive Achievement Myth Interviews Take Me Four Years

Author:Kitty Kelley

“(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

“Sometimes I say that writing a novel is the same as constructing a chair: a person must be able to sit in it, to be balanced on it. If I can produce a great chair, even better. But above all I have to make sure that it has four stable feet.”

Ifs Writing Persons I Can Sometimes Able Novel Four Feet Produce Chairs Stable Balanced

Author:Jose Saramago

“The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write. At four o'clock in the morning, when the promise of a new day still lingered over French lands, he got up from his pallet and left for the fields, taking to pasture the half-dozen pigs whose fertility nourished him and his wife.”

Men Writing Stills Whole Left Half Morning Four Wife Land Fields Promise Whole Life Clock Dozen Pigs New Day Wisest Fertility Pastures Wisest Man Pallets

Author:Jose Saramago

“If there's a character type I despise, it's the all-capable, all-knowing, physically perfect protagonist. My idea of hell would be to be trapped in a four-hundred page, first-person, first-tense, running monologue with a character like that. I think writers who produce characters along those lines should graduate from high school and move on.”

“When I was writing for children, I was writing genre fiction. It was like making a good chair. However beautiful it looked, it needed four legs of the same length, it had to be the right height and it had to be comfortable.”

Writing Children Literature Fiction Four Needed Comfortable Legs Genre Height Chairs Length

Author:Mark Haddon

“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

“After I started publishing poetry I got to teach creative writing. Eventually I was promoted and even got tenure. But then I felt compelled to drop everything and move. But I've been teaching for a long time. More than four decades.”

Writing Long Moving Felt Teach Creative Four Teaching Long Time Decades Publishing Compelled Creative Writing Tenure

Author:Joan Larkin

“All one needs to write a story is one feeling and four walls.”

Needs Writing Stories Feelings Four Wall Four Walls

Author:Doris Betts

“It sounds shameful, but on my best days I write only about three or four hours.”

Writing Three Sound Hours Four Shameful

Author:Anne Bernays

“I'm very much a man of the moment. I can think about an idea for a year, two years, even four years all right, but what ever is going on with me the moment I write is gonna work it's way into the piece.”

Thinking Men Way Writing Years I Can Two Ideas Moments Pieces Four Two Years Working It Four Years

Author:Quentin Tarantino

“My writing's like a journey. I'll know some of the stops ahead of time, and I'll make some of those stops and some of them I won't. Some will be a moot point by the time I get there. You know every script will have four to six basic scenes that you're going to do. It's all the scenes where your characters really come from.”

Knows Writing Character Four Journey Scene Six Scripts Ahead Of Time

Author:Quentin Tarantino

“Now that I'm in 'Nashville,' the thing that I'm loving the most is co-writing. You walk into the room and you shake hands with someone you've never met before and you walk out four hours later and you've got this thing... sharing ideas and everything, it's almost magical, like a miracle.”

Writing Ideas Hands Hours Walks Rooms Four Mets Miracle Shakes Nashville Sharing Ideas

Author:Chip Esten

“I actually had a week where I literally wrote four songs and all of them are on my album. But sometimes you'll go a week where you'll write songs and they never see the light of day. So that process takes a long time.”

Writing Long Sometimes Light Song Process Four Week Long Time Albums

Author:Laura Bell Bundy

“Now I'm fortunate to have a good band in CA, and play many solo gigs as well. My point is that I stopped playing in bands and played solo for four years, to get back into the groove and pulse of writing and singing and who I am on stage.”

Writing Years Wells Play Four Stage Band Singing Who I Am Fortunate Get Back Four Years Solo Gigs Pulse Groove Good Bands

Author:Arthur Godfrey

“I taught elementary school and painted apartments for ten years. Now I write full-time and never have to change a thing I write. Every book comes to me in a flash of inspiration and takes me about two seconds to finish. The longer books, like the Time Warp Trio novels, take a little longer to write - more like four seconds.”

Writing Years Littles Two Book Inspiration School Novel Four Taught Ten Take Me Seconds Flash Apartment Elementary School Warp Trios

Author:Jon Scieszka

“Each of my books has taken me a different length of time to write - eight months for Seesaw Girl, eight months for Shard, three years for When My Name Was Keoko! The publisher takes another year and a half to work on the book, so altogether each book can take up to three or four years to publish.”

Writing Years Book Different Girl Three Names Half Taken Four Months Eight Length Three Years Four Years Publishers Publish Another Year Seesaw

Author:Linda Sue Park

“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

“When I first started making music, it was learning other peoples songs and putting them onto four-track. Like Beatles songs and stuff. When I started writing, I used the singing side of the production as a vehicle for melody and lyrical ideas.”

Writing Firsts Ideas Used Song Stuff Sides Four Singing Track Productions Melody Vehicle Lyrical

Author:M. Ward

“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

“My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis.”

“A curious thing about written literature: It is about four thousand years old, but we have no way of knowing whether four thousand years constitutes senility or the maiden blush of youth.”

Way Writing Years Literature Knowing Four Written Youth Thousand Curious Thousand Years Maidens Senility

Author:John Barth

“In my own field, x-ray crystallography, we used to work out the structure of minerals by various dodges which we never bothered to write down, we just used them. Then Linus Pauling came along to the laboratory, saw what we were doing and wrote out what we now call Pauling's Rules. We had all been using Pauling's Rules for about three or four years before Pauling told us what the rules were.”

Writing Years Used Three My Own Saws Four Fields Structure Various Work Out Rays Four Years Laboratory Bothered Minerals Dodge

Author:John Desmond Bernal

“I was the kind of person who knew what he wanted to do; I wanted to write, I wanted not to be in school, and I felt that university would just be spending another four years of my life before I could write.”

Writing Years Kind Persons Wanted School Felt Four University Spending Four Years

Author:Neil Gaiman

“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

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