A Quote by Jonathan Safran Foer
I didn't intend to write about totems or people searching. I tried not to constrain myself, and this is what I ended up with. There's this great Auden quote: "I look at what I write so I can see what I think."
Related Quotes
There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I live to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure. I don't necessarily intend to publish posthumously, but I do like to write for myself. I pay for this kind of attitude. I'm known as a strange, aloof kind of man. But all I'm doing is trying to protect myself and my work.
I don't worry about being exposed. When I'm writing about myself I think about myself as a character. There is a ton of stuff going on in my life that I don't write about. If I need to write that stuff down, I write about myself in my diary.
I write titles that are confrontational. I write titles that make people want to pick up a book and find out more about it. I write good books; I write great titles though.
When I see somebody being mistreated, my eyes tear up and I want to stop it. And I believe that the best thing I can do is to write about it, because if I insert myself into the equation it doesn't really do much good, but if I write about it I think it could do more good.
I can't write anything for myself. I can write when I hear like [John] Coltrane play something; I used to write chords and stuff for him to play in one bar. I can write for other people, but I don't never write for myself.
When I see an entire community disenfranchised, it disturbs me. Not that I'm a message guy, per se. I write about people. I like to write about human beings, not crap political rhetoric. I've tried to avoid that all my life. When I wrote about soldiers in Vietnam, I wasn't trying to make a political statement. I was trying to write about how screwed things were for soldiers, and how they still are.
I don't write because I think I have anything particularly interesting to say. I write because I love writing more than any other work I've done. I do think about entertaining the reader to the extent that I try always to write a book that I myself would want to read, but I don't think it's up for me to decide if what I've written is interesting to others. That is entirely up to others.
If you look at 'The Have and the Have Nots,' I didn't want to write a show where everyone is great and wonderful and perfect. I wanted to write it so that you're not really sure who the haves are. You look at Hanna, and you see that she doesn't have much, but she has great faith.
I just love to play rock and roll. I love to write songs all the time
about what's up on these streets. I write songs about people getting killed; I write songs about people getting beaten up; I write songsabout people getting taken to jail by the police; and I also write songs about love and happiness.
I really - I don't take my work that seriously, and I think that's what keeps me loose. If I try to write, if I catch myself trying to write, I'll fall right on my face. I'll see it. If I see in the prose that I'm - 'Boy, look at me writing,' I rewrite it. I rewrite it because I don't, because I think it's distracting.
There are many people who say, I write for myself. I think that if you write and publish, then you write for your readers, not just for yourself. Many writers say that they write to be loved. I place myself among those writers.
There are many people who say, 'I write for myself.' I think that if you write and publish, then you write for your readers, not just for yourself. Many writers say that they write to be loved. I place myself among those writers.
I could never write about the sort of people John Cheever or John Updike or even Margaret Atwood write about. I don't mean I couldn't write as well as they do, which of course I couldn't; they're great writers, and I'm no writer at all. But I couldn't even write badly about normal, neurotic people. I don't know that world from the inside. That's just not my orientation.
I don't write about anything I don't want to write about. I like to think I could write about anything pretty much that I chose to. I have been asked to write songs about specific things, and I've always been able to come up with the goods.
I think that as a writer your responsibility is to search for and stir up the things that are in this world. There is violence in all of us, and beauty, and strength, and weakness. What's my job? To only write about the good and the beauty, or is it to write about all of it? That's my greater responsibility, to write about them as I see them and as they are.
With every script, I write a note to my collaborator that says: 'I write full script. But see it as a guide. You take us where we need to go any way you see fit. I tried to write something specifically for you. If you agree with my choices, fine. If not, you do what you have to do.'
Related Authors
Charles Bukowski Quotes
American
Novelist
Charles Dickens Quotes
English
Novelist
Chuck Palahniuk Quotes
American
Novelist
Ernest Hemingway Quotes
American
Novelist
George Eliot Quotes
British
Novelist
George Orwell Quotes
British
Novelist
George R. R. Martin Quotes
American
Novelist
Jane Austen Quotes
British
Novelist
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
German
Novelist
Margaret Atwood Quotes
Canadian
Novelist
Nicholas Sparks Quotes
American
Novelist
Paulo Coelho Quotes
Brazilian
Novelist
Sarah Dessen Quotes
American
Novelist
Stephenie Meyer Quotes
American
Novelist
Veronica Roth Quotes
American
Novelist
Victor Hugo Quotes
French
Novelist