A Quote by Stephin Merritt

If you want to write a love song, you need to not try to write it for a particular person in a particular situation. It needs to be vague, otherwise you're going to fall into trap after trap of trying to rhyme with somebody's name. Keep it vague.
The knowledge that mankind needs is not the way or principle which has an absolute existence, but the particular truths for here and now and for particular individuals. Absolute truth is imaginary, abstract, vague, without evidence, and cannot be demonstrated.
I might've set out to write a particular song about a particular girl, but my experience will run out after four lines, so instead of getting obsessed with the girl, I write about the clothes I'm wearing.
I can't constantly be trying to write the unwritten song, the song that the 15-year-old girl needs. I need to write the song that I need.
I feel like no matter what I write about, I try to end up being the stronger person in the situation. Even in heartbreak, I feel like I'm a much stronger person because of that. I don't want to just write a sad song and still feel sad after that. I want to feel stronger and better.
I don't want to write a novel per year. I know that I need a break of one or two years. So maybe I invent some new, urgent activity so I don't fall into the trap of starting a new novel.
Don't fall into the trap of having to have everything perfect to write or wait until the mood strikes you. If you want it as a job, treat it like a job, and just as you don't go to work only when you feel like it, you have to condition yourself to sit and write even when the ideas don't flow.
I don't ever want to be a person that I'm not. A lot of girls fall into the trap where they are trying to impress other people, and that's the time when they lose themselves.
I always try to write a song, I never just want to write a record. Originally I was not writing songs for myself. ....And I can say this, most of the people who have recorded my songs are songwriters themselves. ... Even if I don't release it myself, somebody else might hear it and want to record it. When you write a song, it gives it that potential. When you write a song, a song has longevity. ... So I wanted to sing inspirational music, and that's exactly how I approached it-only the words have been changed to declare my relationship with God. Songwriting is my gift from God.
I write a song for myself because I need to come out with that particular song.
My main object is to write, to keep learning. I always try to perfect my composition. But I do like writing film and opera music. I believe that it fulfills the needs of particular situations.
Something that you should take particular notice of is the fact that the best scripts have very few explanatory passages. Adding explanation to the descriptive passages of a screenplay is the most dangerous trap you can fall into. It’s easy to explain the psychological state of a character at a particular moment, but it’s very difficult to describe it through the delicate nuances of action and dialogue. Yet it is not impossible.
Every time I try to write a song, when I sit down and think I'm going to write, I really want to write a song, and it never works out. It's always when it hits me unexpectedly on a plane or right before I go to bed, something like that.
Life is not fair, it never was and it is now and it won't ever be. Do not fall into the trap. The entitlement trap, of feeling like you're a victim. You are not.
I don't want to write the song that I wrote yesterday, and I don't want to write the song I'm going to write tomorrow; I only write the music I'm writing now.
When we're trying to form and keep habits, we often search - even unconsciously - for loopholes. We look for justifications that will excuse us from keeping this particular habit in this particular situation.
I always think about the books I'm doing in pretty much the same way. I'm simply trying to write that particular novel as well as that particular novel can be written. I want to listen to what it is telling me, trying to figure out what it wants to do as much as what I want to do with it. There's a negotiation that's constant and ongoing between me and the material I'm working with, because I'm trying to listen to it.
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