“We fret about words, we writers. Words mean. Words point. They are arrows. Arrows stuck in the rough hide of reality. And the more portentous, more general the word, the more they can also resemble rooms or tunnels. They can expand, or cave in. They can come to be filled with a bad smell. They will often remind us of other rooms, where we'd rather dwell or where we think we are already living. They can be spaces we lose the art or the wisdom of inhabiting. And eventually those volumes of mental intention we no longer know how to inhabit will be abandoned, boarded up, closed down.” ThinkingKnowsWritingMeanArtRealityLosesSpaceRoomsKnow HowFilledIntentionSmellStuckRoughAbandonedVolumeCavesArrowsTunnelsMean Words Author:Susan Sontag
“Honestly, as hard a profession as acting is, I think music is even harder. Acting, you're like a leech, because someone else does the hard part for you. They write it for you, then the director tells you what to do. You really just need to know how to pay attention, follow instructions.” ThinkingKnowsNeedsWritingDoeHardPayActingAttentionKnow HowDirectorsMusic IsHarderProfessionHonestlyPay AttentionInstructionLeeches Author:Michael Shannon
“People like ourselves may see nothing wondrous in writing, but our anthropologists know how strange and magical it appears to a purely oral people - a conversation with no one and yet with everyone. What could be stranger than the silence one encounters when addressing a question to a text? What could be more metaphysically puzzling than addressing an unseen audience, as every writer of books must do? And correcting oneself because one knows that an unknown reader will disapprove or misunderstand?” PeopleKnowsWritingMayBookSilenceAudienceKnow HowStrangeReaderConversationOneselfStrangerEncountersUnseenWondrousCorrectingAnthropologistsPuzzling Book:Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
“I'm used to always being different, in any context. People always want to know how I grew up, so I just say I grew up Muslim. That's the truth. Two Muslim girls can write me two extremely different letters - and they do. Some are very supportive, and some question what I do.” PeopleKnowsWantWritingTwoDifferentUsedGirlKnow HowGrewGrew UpLettersSupportiveBeing Different Author:Noureen DeWulf
“If I were a writer and not a singer in 10 years, I don't know how I'd feel about writing really personal songs and getting someone else to sing them.” IfsKnowsFeelsWritingYearsSongKnow HowSingers Author:Adele
“I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language [...] I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way.” KnowsWayWritingIdeasNextLanguageStepsKnow HowNo IdeaProgrammingLogicalProgramming Languages Author:Rasmus Lerdorf
“I do not know how old I was when the daydreams became more than that, and I decided to write them down, but by the time I entered high school, I was confident that I would one day be a writer.” KnowsWritingSchoolKnow HowOne DayHigh SchoolDecidedDaydreaming Author:Mildred D. Taylor
“I met a young woman the other day, and she said, what advice would you have for a writer, and I said it would be to work every day... Your job is to write. The rest of it will take care of itself. But, generally, it seems ... you know how that is, you meet people and they have a talent for self-promotion. Those are the pushy people. And you know their writing's not going to be any good, because that's not their talent.” PeopleKnowsWritingSaidSelfSeemsWould BeCareJobsYoungKnow HowAdviceTalentMetsTake CareYoung WomenPromotionSelf PromotionPushy Author:David Sedaris
“I was in Los Angeles making 'Dead Again' and the producer, Lindsay Doran , asked me if I'd be interested in adapting this book, .. Austen is my favorite author and I thought, 'Well, of course, I'd be very interested, but I don't know how. I don't know where to start, A, writing a screenplay and B, sort of adapting it from a great novel.” IfsKnowsWritingWellsBookCoursesNovelKnow HowMy FavoriteProducersLos AngelesScreenplaysAdaptabilityAdaptingAustenGreat Novels Author:Emma Thompson
“Obviously, comedy, or art in general, or television, or whatever you want to call it's all subjective. But I do like to know what people are thinking. I don't know how long I'll keep doing that. As it goes on and on, I might become more fearful of it. For the time being, I'm not opposed to reading what people write.” PeopleThinkingKnowsWantWritingLongArtMightReadingKnow HowComedyTelevisionGoes OnFearfulSubjective Author:Charlie Day
“I don't actually talk about my books much, because I find if I talk about them I don't want to write them anymore. I write to find out what happens. You know how you read a book? That's what I'm doing except I'm just doing it a lot slower because it takes a lot longer to do.” IfsKnowsWantWritingBookHappensKnow How Author:Charles de Lint
“If you can't read and write you can't think. Your thoughts are dispersed if you don't know how to read and write. You've got to be able to look at your thoughts on paper and discover what a fool you were.” IfsThinkingKnowsWritingLooksAbleKnow HowFoolPaper Author:Ray Bradbury
“A successful poem says what a poet wants to say, and more, with particular finality. The remarks he makes about his poems are incidental when the poem is good, or embarrassing or absurd when it is bad and he is not permitted to say how the good poem is good, and may never know how the bad poem is bad. It is better to write about other people's poetry.” PeopleKnowsWantWritingMayKnow HowSuccessfulParticularPoetAbsurdEmbarrassingRemarksFinality Author:Randall Jarrell
“Crossing out is an art that is, perhaps, even more difficult than writing. It requires the sharpest eye to decide what is superfluous and must be removed. And it requires ruthlessness toward yourself -- the greatest ruthlessness and self-sacrifice. You must know how to sacrifice parts in the name of the whole.” KnowsInspirationalWritingArtSelfWholeEyeLiteratureNamesDifficultKnow HowSacrificeCrossingsSelf SacrificeSuperfluousRuthlessness Author:Yevgeny Zamyatin