A Quote by Joe Haldeman

Don't 'write what you know.' Make up something new!

Joe Haldeman

Quote Topics

Know Make Make Up New Something Something New Up Write

Quote Author

Joe Haldeman
American - Author
Born: June 9, 1943

The most exciting thing I aspire to do is to write something new that I know is going to work, or perform something that I know is going to make people laugh.

B. J. Novak

If you write something wrong enough, I'll be glad to make up a new witticism just for you.

Larry Wall

Gustave Flaubert said, "Emma Bovary, c'est moi." It is not possible to write something you are not, but to have a new form, with a different hair color and a new body ... I do very little of that. That's why I keep bringing up the same people. I haven't given myself a hard time about it. But I can't make six new characters instead of one.

Lore Segal

I don't know if I have some kind of defiance disorder or something, but if I'm hired to write something by "The Man," or by a studio, for whatever reason, it's really hard for me to finish. I inevitably wind up using that time to write something else.

Diablo Cody

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

Haruki Murakami

If anyone e-mails you something "by George Carlin," there's a 99 percent chance I did not write it. I didn't write "Paradox Of Our Time." I didn't write "George Carlin On Aging." I didn't write a eulogy for my wife after she died. I didn't write the New Orleans thing. I didn't write "I Am A Bad American." None of them. You know what I've decided to do? I'm going to get a little cheap put-it-together-yourself website called NotMe.com.

George Carlin

Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.

Charles Bukowski

I write to please myself—of course, that is a given. But beyond this reach for pleasure, I know that I write for my countrymen, that they may be lifted from apathy and ignorance. I write because of a compulsion to make something out of the nothing that is my own life.

F. Sionil Jose

We write to find out what we didn’t know we knew. We write to know deeper and truer. We write to connect the dots: a whole new constellation.

Carolyn Coman

When we think we have something to say we are usually wrong. We are fooling ourselves. Trip into discovery. Don't write what you know, discover something new.

Marie Howe

When I get a new script, I write a record of how many costume and make-up changes I have. I cross-check them against the shooting schedule and then consult with the hair and make-up designers.

Gina Bellman

Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.

Natalie Goldberg

When someone asks me to do something, something new, something I don’t know about, and if I haven’t done it, I’ll say yes. Just so I can try something new. You never know what you might like.

Osric Chau

When you write something new about science, other scientists may not like it but they pay attention because it is subject to proof. When you write something new about art, it is subject only to the reader's discomfort, and will probably be rejected.

Walter Darby Bannard

That's something you can't get off the wires in New York is people providing intelligent coverage of what your theater company in Podunk is up to. Many of the people who write what we call amateur criticism are professionals in anything other than name and receiving a paycheck. Very often, they know more than the professional critic who might be writing for their local newspaper. So, really, I'm all for it. It's changing the playing field, it's shaking things up, it's going to make the critical environment a healthier environment.

Terry Teachout

He misses the feeling of creating something out of something. That’s right — something out of something. Because something out of nothing is when you make something up out of thin air, in which case it has no value. Anybody can do that. But something out of something means it was really there the whole time, inside you, and you discover it as part of something new, that’s never happened before.

Etgar Keret

A Quote by Joe Haldeman

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors