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Writing Quotes

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Writing Quotes

“I like the performing. And interviews, even. And the stuff that's not sitting in a room by yourself with empty paper. But I never loved writing, to tell you the truth.”

Writing Stuff Rooms Paper Sitting Empty Performing Interviews

Author:Randy Newman

“Sometimes I think my writing sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewriter running.”

Thinking Writing Sometimes Running Romance Left Sound Rooms Typewriters

Author:Gene Fowler

“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.”

Thinking Knows Writing Mean Art Reality Loses Space Rooms Know How Filled Intention Smell Stuck Rough Abandoned Volume Caves Arrows Tunnels Mean Words

Author:Susan Sontag

“I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it, a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled.”

Ifs Writing Heart Littles Real Hurt Dark Loss Rooms Son Broken My Heart Happenings Died My Son I Was Hurt

Author:Neil Gaiman

“I write a tiny fraction of what I used to write. My only job used to be to just write songs, and that was a really nice job to have, but only a tiny amount of people heard those songs, and I didn't make a living from it, and eventually I begged my parents to let me move back into my room.”

People Writing Jobs Moving Used Song Parent Rooms Nice Heard Amount Let Me Tiny Used To Be Fractions Really Nice

Author:Regina Spektor

“I usually write for the individual reader -though I would like to have many such readers. There are some poets who write for people assembled in big rooms, so they can live through something collectively. I prefer my reader to take my poem and have a one-on-one relationship with it.”

People Writing Bigs Individual Rooms Poet Reader One On One

Author:Wislawa Szymborska

“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

“I definitely shut down sometimes. I always just go into my own little cocoon and write, and I surround myself with as much music as possible. The last girlfriend I had, when we broke up, I remember being in a room for days on days on days with my music cranked up, playing songs like Kanye's '808's & Heartbreak.' That playlist just was long!”

Writing Littles Long Sometimes Lasts Remember Song My Own Rooms Broke Girlfriend Surround Broke Up Cocoons Playlists

Author:Tristan Wilds

“Character is character and voice is voice, which translates nicely from writing novels to writing TV. But the process is different. You have a writer's room, people pitch you jokes and you collaborate.”

People Writing Different Character Process Voice Rooms Novel Tvs Jokes Translate

Author:Jennifer Weiner

“I sometimes read about authors who say they require a perfectly silent room maintained at precisely 68 degrees, with trash bags taped over the windows and a white-noise machine in the corner to write, and I think, 'Who are these people, and do any of them have kids?”

People Thinking Writing Sometimes Kids White Rooms Degrees Window Machines Silent Corners Noise Bags Trash White Noise

Author:Jennifer Weiner

“Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment.”

“Look at it this way: if you write the novel of 'Cold Mountain,' it costs exactly the same to produce and market as a novel set in a room. If you make the film, the disparity of costs is huge.”

Ifs Way Writing Looks Film Rooms Novel Produce Huge Cold Cost Mountain Disparity Cold Mountain

Author:Anthony Minghella

“The tough thing about writing is you go into a room alone, you close the door and you do your work.”

Writing Rooms Doors Tough Tough Things

Author:Randy Wayne White

“I wanted to be free to write the way I wanted to write, and my impression of Christian publishing, at least in fiction, was that there wasn't room for what I wanted to write.”

Way Writing Wanted Christian Rooms Fiction Impression Publishing

Author:Sara Zarr

“I like writing for movies. It's nice to be alone working on fiction in your room, and then it's nice to be in a room with a bunch of people working on a movie.”

People Writing Rooms Fiction Nice Bunch Your Room

Author:Daniel Handler

“Real writers - serious writers with serious subjects, who earn their living at it - all seem to write in small rooms with that knotty-pine 1974 look on the top-floor rear of their houses. Rooms with views.”

Writing Looks Real Seems House Rooms Views Subjects Serious Small Rooms Room With A View Serious Subjects

Author:Peter York

“The songs, if I write alone in a room, end up being a little more quiet, a little more subdued. If I play with other musicians or percussive instruments, it might end up being a little more upbeat.”

Ifs Writing Littles Ends Play Might Song Rooms Quiet Musician Instruments Upbeat

Author:Marketa Irglova

“I wouldn't describe myself as a do-gooder. That's really more my wife. I'm kind of just the obsessed guy who's been writing and making movies since I was a little kid, just in a room and make it.”

Writing Kind Littles Kids Guy Rooms Wife My Wife Obsessed Little Kid Describe Myself

Author:M. Night Shyamalan

“I tend to write things seven times before I show them to my editor. I write them seven times, then I take them on tour, read them like a dozen times on tour, then go back to the room and rewrite, read and rewrite... I would never show him a first draft, because then he's really going to be sick of it by the twelfth draft.”

Writing Firsts Shows Rooms Sick Seven Editors Dozen Editing

Author:David Sedaris

“I have a very beautiful room in my house... It's glass on three sides, and you'd think that's the perfect place to write. Somehow in that nice room I feel too exposed, and... I'm too distracted by things going on, so I end up writing in a not-very-nice office bedroom.”

Thinking Feels Writing Ends Beautiful Three House Sides Perfect Rooms Nice Office Glasses Exposed Bedroom Distracted Very Nice Very Beautiful Three Sides

Author:Jeffrey Eugenides

“Did you ever find that there is room between the two opposing rules of a paradox? That space between two almost opposite rules is the ground where I play and write.”

Writing Two Play Space Rooms Opposites Paradox Opposing Space Between

Author:Mu Xin

“I really like our studio. It's definitely not in any way slick; it's very homemade, literally. Everyone has their own room to produce and write, and [there's a] big rehearsal space.”

Way Writing Bigs Space Rooms Produce Studios Rehearsal Slick Homemade

Author:Yukimi Nagano

“My goal from the very beginning was just to write good songs that don't require any production to be felt or understood. I wanted to be able to sit in a room with a guitar and play the song from beginning to end and have it be as impactful as if you heard the studio version with all the bells and whistles.”

Ifs Writing Ends Play Able Wanted Song Felt Goal Rooms Heard Understood Guitar Productions Studios Versions Bells

Author:Madonna Ciccone

“Whether the darken'd room to muse invite, Or whiten'd wall provoke the skew'r to write; In durance, exile, Bedlam, or the Mint, Like Lee or Budgel I will rhyme and print.”

Writing Rooms Wall Print Invites Provoking Muse Rhyme Exile Mint

Book:The Works of Alexander Pope: Esq., with His Last Corrections, Additions, and Improvements; as They Were Delivered to the Editor a Little Before His Death; Together with the Commentaries and Notes of Mr. Warburton

Source: The Works of Alexander Pope: Esq., with His Last Corrections, Additions, and Improvements; as They Were Delivered to the Editor a Little Before His Death; Together with the Commentaries and Notes of Mr. Warburton

“[As a screenwriter] I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.”

Way Writing Mind Rooms Silence Written Mines Quiet Nostalgia Shoulders Balanced Exile Better Ways Screenwriters Great Writing There Comes A Time Quiet Room

Author:Raymond Chandler

“You grow a whole lot more as a writer by getting old stories out of the house and letting new ones come in and live with you until they grow up and are ready to go. Don't let the old ones stay there and grow fat and cranky and eat all the food out of the refrigerator. You have dozens of generations of stories inside you, but the only way to make room for the new ones is to write the old ones and mail them off.”

Way Writing Whole Stories House Grows Rooms Growing Up Generations Ready Fats Dozen Mail Getting Old Refrigerators Cranky

Author:Orson Scott Card