Top 1200 Successful Writing Quotes & Sayings - Page 10

I haven't had trouble with writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, cliched writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn't have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments.

Most employees want to be involved in a successful business and most employees are happy for people running successful businesses to be paid a reasonable wage and a market rate for it, provided they understand the reason. What they hate most of all is pay for failure.

All of a sudden, when you're exposed to a large audience, they think you just started writing that day, but I started years before. I look back at things I wrote then and I'm so embarrassed - the writing seems so blocky and choppy to me and I wouldn't have wanted success any sooner because the writing was even worse.

You're trying to improve every year. And you're trying to make improvements on what you learn about yourself, when you're successful or struggle. You try to minimize those stretches. And you realize what you do when you're successful, and you try and lengthen those.

I can't say that I am not driven by success or have a fear of being successful. But for me, the ultimate thing is just about being good at what I do. Because if I made an album that I didn't really like and it was super successful then I wouldn't happy within. That's the kind of person I am.

I like writing and I enjoy it. It's painful. You can't get around the pain of writing. I'm still trying to balance on what I think is my creative habit. It varies, but I do know that I need to continue. It helps me with my acting, and the writing helps me be invested in a different way.

Success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively for women. When a man is successful, he is liked by both men and women. When a woman is successful, people of both genders like her less.

When I started writing short stories, I thought I was writing a novel. I had like 60 or 70 pages. And what I realized was that I don't write inner monologue. I don't want to talk about what somebody is thinking or feeling. I wanted to try to show it in an interesting way. And so what I realized was that I was really writing a screenplay.

Writing a TV show is totally different than writing features, or just, what I started doing is writing features. You write a little bit more organically. You start from the beginning to the end, beginning, middle and end.

Writing for the stage is different from writing for a book. You want to write in a way that an actor has material to work with, writing in the first person not the third person, and pulling out the dramatic elements in a bigger way for a stage presentation.

Millions of people are joined in the knowledge that writing brings insight and calm in the same way that prayer, meditation, or a long walk in the woods does. They have discovered that writing allows the racing mind to move at the pace of pen and paper or the pace of typing on the waiting screen - that journal writing is a spiritual practice.

One of my idols is my dad. All his work in Motown, and just the way he conducted himself as a human being was always interesting to me, and it seemed like the successful way, and it is a successful way, and I always wanted to do that. He's funny, and all that stuff.

I can work a lot faster when I'm writing a screenplay than when I'm writing a play because, if I'm having a problem with a scene or something, I can just be writing it in a way where there's no dialogue, or find a way to make sound do the work that I want to do or a close-up do the work that I need to do.

One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light.

Writing screenplays is incredibly hard. I can't call it joy. Writing Novels? Joy. Directing? Joy. Writing Screenplays? That's where you pay all your dues.

I think that screenwriting probably isn't seen as writing in the same way that novel-writing is seen as writing. But I certainly don't see it that way.

Critics stopped being relevant when they stopped writing to inform and contextualize, and when they started writing to signal who they are, to display their identity by their stance on what they are writing about. Criticism should never be about the critic, but thats what it has become, and that’s why no one cares about them anymore.

I've been writing fiction probably since I was about 6 years old, so it's something that is second nature to me now. I just sit down and start writing. I don't sit down and start writing and it comes out perfectly - it's a process.

It's very simple: The more successful you are, the more you'll earn. But if you're not successful, you will not earn a dime.

I always tell my writing students that every good piece of writing begins with both a mystery and a love story. And that every single sentence must be a poem. And that economy is the key to all good writing. And that every character has to have a secret.

The only way to do it is to do it: by writing, writing, writing.

Often we are caught in a mental trap of seeing enormously successful people and thinking they are where they are because they have some special gift. Yet a closer look shows that the greatest gift that extraordinarily successful people have over the average person is their ability to get themselves to take action.

I'm always taken aback by things that are successful that I think are just crap, and then I'm completely surprised when things I do end up being successful because you walk into things and you never know... It's just really remarkable.

I'm accountable - this sounds emo - to black American writing, Southern writing, Southern black American writing, American writing and my people. That's kind of what keeps me accountable.

I believe there's a strong difference between something being good and something being successful. The successful thing is something we have no control over.

I like writing, and I enjoy it. It's painful. You can't get around the pain of writing. I'm still trying to balance on what I think is my creative habit. It varies, but I do know that I need to continue. It helps me with my acting, and the writing helps me be invested in a different way.

If you're black, you can't just be ordinary. All successful black people are extraordinary. If you are tremendously successful, and you're black, you are extraordinary, or you wouldn't stand out in this world.

Good writers hate bad writing but hating bad writing doesn’t make you good. Writing badly does.

On the whole, anything that gets you writing and keeps you writing is a good thing. Anything that stops you writing is a bad thing.

When you get immersed in whatever you're writing, the world does suddenly get so filtered through what you're writing. And then of course what you're writing then filters the world right back.

If a film becomes successful, the actor is blamed for being commercial and not having a true love for movies. When we do serious films, we will be blamed for not planning our career properly. I believe that what one should do is to make good cinema and try to make it successful.

A successful person isn't necessarily better than her less successful peers at solving problems; her pattern-recognition facilities have just learned what problems are worth solving.

This is my year of transition from what I'm calling the second phase of my life to the third phase of my life. And I wanted to pass it along. What I mean by that is, in the first days of your life you're dependent on others and you learn. You're basically a kid, depending on your parents. In the second phase of your life, you're working and others are dependent on you and you're trying to be successful. And then when you go to the third phase of your life it's no longer as much of a kick to be successful. There's a natural, instinctual desire to help other people be successful.

The first Law of Heaven is obedience, and it should be the first law of every home. It is the foundation of an orderly home, a successful family, and the successful lives of the children. The wife is the key.

Many successful people are no more talented than unsuccessful people. The difference between them lies in the old axiom that successful people do those things that unsuccessful people don't like to do.

I've run a very successful business, and I think I can also run a very successful team.

I'm happy because - I'm not doing anything deceitful, I think, to my family. I'm successful because I don't have to sleep with one of my friends' girlfriends or wife or something. That's why I'm successful, that's success to me. I'm not dead, I'm not in the gutter - that's success to me.

Take Ezra Pound's translations of poetry from Chinese. He doesn't really know Chinese, and the very strange results that he comes up with aren't all successful, but as a whole it's incredibly successful, moving us away from familiar forms and indicating other forms we might think in or express in.

I came into science fiction at a very good time, when the doors were getting thrown open to all kinds of more experimental writing, more literary writing, riskier writing. It wasn't all imitation Heinlein or Asimov. And of course, women were creeping in, infiltrating. Infesting the premises.

The most successful entrepreneurs tell you they have a great team. Lots of small-business owners let ego get in the way. Many people helped me along the way. You've got to remember the people who were loyal to you, and don't forget them when you become successful.

Once established, a successful style looks like an inevitability - maybe that's the definition of a successful style - but there's often the time when it looks like anything but.

Sometimes you're writing a song and you have an image whilst writing a song. I don't think you ever base a songwriting process around a video, but when you're writing a song sometimes it'll be a very visual song.

The secret of a successful art career is to make more art that folks think they need than pieces they just want. When a piece of art emotionally connects with a person the work becomes a need. You are then on your way to becoming successful.

When I got into the business of entertainment, I did it for a reason. I didn't do it to not be successful. I did it to be successful. And to hopefully get to the highest level that I possibly could. Thus far, I'm achieving those goals. That doesn't make you stop. That doesn't make you complacent. It makes you want to do more.

You certainly can't be a perfect person, coming up with the 100% correct solution, all the time. It's just a combination of a chain of good decisions that comes up with a successful product or a successful film. That's what you hope for. But, nothing about the system is 100% fool proof.

I'm not ashamed of being successful. You know, they criticized Romney for being ashamed of it. I think we've got to inspire our kids that we shouldn't be ashamed to be successful.

I didn't become a commercially successful artist by design, and actually I think that commercially successful just means, if you analyse it, that a lot of people like you. It's become a dirty word, and I don't necessarily think it needs to be.

When I am writing poetry, I try to make my mind go a little lazy, to not think too much, as a way of opening up the part of the brain that makes poems. If I'm successful in this part of the process I'm often not. If my mind gets too lazy it will linger in familiar boring territory, it's like my mind can stroke the physical world.

I see creative-writing classes as some sort of AA meeting. It is more of a support group for people who write than an actual course in which you learn writing skills. This support group is extremely important because there is something very lonely about writing.

'Writing' always means 'not writing' to me because I will do anything to put it off. I think this is mainly because writing anything down and then handing it over to a third party - especially in comedy - is such an exposing act that you naturally want to delay the process.

To be successful, it is imperative that you not only know the organizations you work with, but more specifically, you have to know the actual people you work with within these organizations, understand what their personal goals and motivations are. In short, to be successful, you need to humanize your clients.

I know I had been successful in football. I had been successful in broadcasting. I didn't think that anything could touch me. I thought, I can beat anything.

The invention that most people know me for is the Super Soaker water gun. I knew the gun worked well, and I knew it would be successful. I did not realize how successful it would be.

Almost everyone I meet is successful because of doing a lot of things right, and almost everyone I meet is successful in spite of some behavior that defies common sense.

One of the things which make any company successful, in particular the Home Depot, was that we understood and catered to the customer. If it didn't sell, it didn't make a difference what we thought or our research told us. They told us if it was successful by buying it or not.

I would sit in my room and become hysterical about the wild incredible story I was writing. And I thought I was writing realism. It never occurred to me that I was writing absurdity. Realism and absurdity are so similar in the lives of American blacks one cannot tell the difference.

Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know-and what we don't know-about whatever we're trying to learn.

I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can't truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles.

Historically, Vietnam movies have been profitable. All of them. 'Platoon,' 'Full Metal Jacket,' 'Apocalypse Now,' 'The Deer Hunter.' You're looking at movies that have been not pretty successful, but very successful. The foreign numbers have been extraordinary.

Read. Read. Read. Read many genres. Read good writing. Read bad writing and figure out the difference. Learn the craft of writing.