Top 1200 English Writing Quotes & Sayings - Page 20

I tend to delay writing by doing more research - it's really the act of writing the piece that I have the hardest time with.

I did a minor in creative writing in college, but I didn't start writing until I stayed at home with my own children.

I didn't take writing seriously at first - I didn't think I could do it. When I did, I fell in love with it. But writing is very lonely.

It's not writing in the traditional sense, but I've always said that the writing process continues on the set and even into the editing room.

When I'm writing something, everything falls into place. When I'm not writing, stuff keeps happening to me, and there's nowhere to put it all.

For me, the process of writing a novel happens mostly in your head before you actually start writing.

My feeling is that writing Fantasy should be harder - not easier - than writing any other kind of fiction.

I didn't originally intend on writing a book. I started writing during the day to feel like I was accomplishing something creative.

I'd write of people and places like I knew, and I'd make my characters talk everyday English; and I'd let the sun rise and set in the usual quiet way without much fuss over the fact. If I had to have villains at all, I'd give them a chance, Anne--I'd give them a chance. There are some terrible bad men the world, I suppose, but you'd have to go a long piece to find them...But most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us. Keep on writing, Anne.

My job is to work at song writing and singing and telling the truth in song writing. My job is to be courageous enough to go on stage and tell the truth, the same truth that's gone into my song writing.

When I'm writing, sometimes it gets to that place where I feel like the piece is writing itself and I'm trying not to get in the way.

If you think about writing a book, or when I did, it seems daunting, but when I began writing, it just started flowing.

There's exceptional work being done on television. Some of our great writers are writing for television. When you have things to choose from, you typically go after the writing - unless you're going after the money. There are fewer opportunities in film to make money with good writing, unless you're an action hero.

I chose law because writing was involved. I didn't realize how boring legal writing was, but I even learned to love that.

What's the challenge in writing a novel that few people will read? I'm more than happy writing what I do and have no plans to change that.

I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since.

I think it's dangerous to think you know what you're writing. I usually don't know, and usually I just discover it in the course of writing. I envy those writers who can outline a beginning, a middle, and end. Fitzgerald supposedly did it. John Irving does. Bret Easton Ellis does. But for me, the writing itself is the process of discovery. I can't see all that far ahead.

But I don't know, maybe it's just as well I never got there. I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: "It's there.

As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn't seen before. Writing a poem is always a process of discovery.

I'm more interested in the writing than in the content per se (good writing can be about wallpaper and I'll devour it).

For all forms, writing dialogue is almost like writing music. I pay close attention to rhythms and tones.

I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes.

What keeps me writing is that I can only know through writing. My major sense organ is apparently a pencil.

The aim of art is almost divine: to bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry.

The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.

I think I came to film-making through writing. I started to write, and people, teachers, responded to my writing.

I've found it really hard to finish writing songs when you're writing on not just your schedule but somebody else's.

I try to sort of make myself emotional in the moment when I'm writing, and that always translates better. When I'm writing, I can't do abstract.

Writing wasn't about making money. I wanted to find fulfillment in writing and telling stories, and that's what's driven me.

Writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too.

I'm not writing for fundamentalists. I'm writing for the people who have been repelled by that kind of thinking and yet who think there might be something they haven't yet discovered.

There is a difference between writing and being an author. Authors talk. I'm standing here talking now. This has nothing to do with writing.

It's insane to be a writer and not be a reader. When I'm writing I'm more likely to be reading four or five books at once, just in bits and pieces rather than subjecting myself to a really brilliant book and thinking, "Well what's the point of me writing anything?" I'm more likely to read a book through when I take a break from writing.

I've always liked the idea that writing is a form of travel. And I started my writing career as a mystery novelist for adults.

I don't think writing open-ended lyrics is necessarily an important part of writing good pop songs.

Writing is a form of talking, although writing is such an odd thing in and of itself. People go about it in such different ways.

When I'm writing, sometimes it gets to that place where I feel like the piece is writing itself and I'm trying not to get in the way

You get another person who operates only in an African language and there are many persons who operate only in African languages; he or she is excluded from all the goodies that come with English. And even in terms of justice, law codes, the legal system. A person who does not know English in Africa is excluded from that system because he can only operate through acts of translation.

I've spent most of my life writing and developing everything that I've wanted to be in - which is why I started writing in the first place.

I was someone who wanted to be a writer but who wasn't writing. I was someone buying books on writing. I was someone telling people that I was writer. But I was not writing.

I suppose I often think of my writing as quite impersonal. But it turned out, when my father died, writing was exactly what I wanted to do.

I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.

I do labor - it's part of the process. Writing is no easier today than it was in the beginning: writing well is very hard to do. Always.

Fanaticism? No. Writing is exciting and baseball is like writing. You can never tell with either how it will go.

Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope, some day, to find something to say.

When I'm writing the first draft, I'm writing in a very slovenly way: anything to get the outline of the story on paper.

I don't do much of anything consciously in writing - in poetry writing, anyway, prose usually being a different matter, of course.

With support jobs moving to China and India, it's not surprising that English-speaking countries' top frustration revolves around the difficulty of understanding customer service representatives. However, even if the level of customer service is exceptional, the extent to which poorly-understood accents trump quality of service speaks to English-speaking customers' growing intolerance of non-native speech, more so than in other countries.

When I turned to writing fantasy, and writing for young people, it was joyous. It was like discovering an underground lake of ideas that went on forever.

The most important advice I can offer is that writing is a craft that you can learn by practicing. If you keep writing, you will improve.

I tend to elongate the sentences as I'm writing and editing, and there is just something about the feeling of writing longhand that I really love.

The end of secrecy would be the end of the novel - especially the English novel. The English novel requires social secrecy, personal secrecy.

Writing pilots is such a specific thing. It's not even really writing TV shows. A pilot is its own beast.

Fantasy is my genre and my home in the writing world. I consider it the biggest writing room in all literature, where there are literally no boundaries at all.

I've always been an all around creative person. Song writing and writing are great ways for me to express myself.

Being a writer involves writing. You've got to commit to sitting down and writing instead of Xbox or Netflix.

There's more than enough in the world I am currently writing about to last for several lifetimes of writing.

News writing and sports writing have become synonymous. And it started with, you know, free agency, and now it's in the concussion debate.

I have been writing songs since I was 9 years old, so writing has and always will be my first love and passion.

The best kind of writing, and the biggest thrill in writing, is to suddenly read a line from your typewriter that you didnt know was in you.