A Quote by Shunryu Suzuki

The Zen way of calligraphy is to write in the most straightforward, simple way as if you were a beginner, not trying to make something skillful or beautiful, but simply writing with full attention as if you were discovering what you were writing for the first time; then your full nature will be in your writing.

Shunryu Suzuki

Quote Topics

Attention Beautiful Beginner Calligraphy Discovering First First Time Full Make Most Nature Simple Simple Way Simply Skillful Something Straightforward Then Time Trying Way Were Will Write Writing Your Zen

Quote Author

Shunryu Suzuki
Japanese - Leader
May 18, 1904 - December 4, 1971

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing - none of that is writing. Writing is writing. Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life; the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.

Doris Lessing

You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life - the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.

Doris Lessing

People who write for reward by way of recognition or monetary gain don't know what they're doing. They're in the category of those who write; they are not writers. Writing is simply something you must do. It's rather like virtue in that it is its own reward. Writing is selfish and contradictory in its terms. First of all, you're writing for an audience of one, you must please the one person you're writing for. Yourself.

Harper Lee

Write. Start writing today. Start writing right now. Don’t write it right, just write it -and then make it right later. Give yourself the mental freedom to enjoy the process, because the process of writing is a long one. Be wary of “writing rules” and advice. Do it your way.

Tara Moss

I feel like, if you're writing the same songs you were writing when you were 17 in your 30s, something's wrong. As a grown man, you're more confident, and you have less to prove.

Benji Madden

Actually, I've taught creative writing in Turkey, at an English language university, where the students were native Turkish speakers, but they were writing their essays in English, and they were very interesting - even the sense of structure, the conventions of writing, the different styles of writing.

Elif Batuman

I figure I wrote 37 songs in 20 years, and that's not exactly a full-time job. It wasn't that I was writing and writing and writing and quit. Every now and then I wrote something, and every now and then I didn't. The second just outnumbered the first.

Tom Lehrer

Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you're trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give you your way in.

Laini Taylor

At first, teaching was more or less a straightforward way of making a living and having access to institutional resources while writing - aka libraries. And that was not inconsiderable. But it didn't in any way touch the writing. Maybe it would push the writing aside sometimes, but mostly it was fine.

Alexander Chee

The secret to writing sound effects is having a room you can be alone in, trying to make the sounds yourself, and seeing what comes out. It's similar to if you're writing a character talking with their mouth full: the only way I know to transcribe that is to stuff my fist in my mouth and write down what sounds I make when I try to talk.

Ryan North

If you always dreamed of writing a novel or a memoir, and you used to love to write, and were pretty good at it, will it break your heart if it turns out you never got around to it? If you wake up one day at eighty, will you feel nonchalant that something always took precedence over a daily commitment to discovering your creative spirit? If not--if this very thought fills you with regret--then what are you waiting for?

Anne Lamott

I wrote lots of scripts that never got made and they were terrible. I thought they were good at the time. You can't write two scripts and expect your career to take off. Keep writing. Be you. Be original. A lot of people go for a genre, which is fine if you can do that really well, but we all have such layered histories. We all come from a unique background. Write about your past, write about you. Or make stuff up, but make it about something that really matters.

Nicole Holofcener

I started writing sketches with Dennis Kelly, who I ended up writing 'Pulling' with. We entered a BBC competition and did quite well, then started writing bits for other people's shows. You wheedle your way in, write pilots and eventually you end up writing a sitcom.

Sharon Horgan

There is a huge tension in trying to write with small children because they demand your attention and your time with a fierceness that can be matched by nothing else, but if you are successful in writing while you have small children, I actually think that your writing is likely to be deeper than it was before.