A Quote by Pat Conroy

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking.

Pat Conroy

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Pat Conroy
American - Writer
October 26, 1945 - March 4, 2016

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear. If the writing is good, then the result seems effortless and inevitable. But when you want to say something life-changing or ineffable in a single sentence, you face both the limitations of the sentence itself and the extent of your own talent.

Pat Conroy

Fundamentally, whether directing in the theatre or a film, you have to be a good storyteller, regardless of the form. The thing I had to work hardest at was thinking in shots.

John Crowley

For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence.

Wallace Shawn

I think comedy is the hardest actual form of writing there is.

Michael Hirst

I'm more interested in moving toward writing stories - thinking about the graphic novel form, and just something more long-form. I did a lot of literary translation in college. Translation is an art. But for sure writing has always been a part of how I think through my ideas.

Chitra Ganesh

For me, the hardest part is getting up and writing, that's the hard part. I always felt like I could teach someone to direct if I really had to. I feel like it's a skill that's passable, but writing... writing is the worst. That's what I'm doing right now, it's just the hardest thing that you'll ever do.

Ben Younger

When you're really caught up in writing a poem, it can be a form of prayer. I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer. I feel it in different degrees and not with every poem. But in certain ways writing is a form of prayer.

Denise Levertov

I want to be the band everyone knows that goes hardest. Plays the hardest, parties the hardest, lives the hardest, loves the hardest, does everything the hardest, harder than anybody else.

Austin Carlile

You know that thing people say, 'poetry is the hardest, stories are the second hardest, novels are the easiest?' I'm here to tell you that novels are the hardest. Writing a novel is unbelievably difficult. It's nightmarish.

Ethan Canin

I do enjoy the form of things. I enjoy finding the form that seems best to fit what I'm thinking about. I don't set out to find a bizarre way of writing.

Caryl Churchill

Writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

Don DeLillo

For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

Don DeLillo

The hardest part about writing fiction is finding long stretches of time to do it: for me, this means writing mostly on Saturdays and Sundays. But I am always thinking about my characters, jotting down ideas in stolen moments and hoping I'll be able to make sense of them when the weekend rolls around.

J. Courtney Sullivan

Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.

Amy Tan

Writing in form is a way of developing your thinking - your thinking along with the tradition. In a way, it's not you alone, it's you in partnership.

Marilyn Nelson

I think film writing, you're thinking in pictures, and stage writing, you're thinking in dialogue. In film writing, it's also, you only get so many words, so everything has to earn its place in a really economical way. I think for stage writing, you have more leeway.

Zoe Kazan

A Quote by Pat Conroy

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