Top 1200 Writing And Thinking Quotes & Sayings - Page 19

Stop thinking about your difficulties, whatever they are, and start thinking about God instead.

I creep over to my chair and sit there with my notebook and my thermos of coffee. It's my best time for thinking, because I haven't started thinking about anything else yet, and the thoughts can kind of go in and out of my head.

If you can't be unconventional, be obtuse. Be deliberately obtuse, because there are 5 billion people out there thinking in train tracks, and thinking what they have been taught to think.

I just love music. I love writing songs. It's not even a job; it's a gift. I'm waiting for someone to kick me out of the party because I snuck in here, and I keep thinking somebody's going to figure out that I have no clue. Turns out that most of them have even less of a clue.

At first I was afraid, I was petrified, kept thinking I could never live without you by my side. But then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong, and I grew strong.

Writing for me, even what you call serious writing, is play.

People think I'm into positive thinking. I'm not a positive thinking guy. I'm into the truth. I'm a hunter of human excellence.

It is always the enemy who started it, even if he was not the first to speak out, he was certainly planning it; and if he was not actually planning it, he was thinking of it; and, if he was not thinking of it, he would have thought of it.

I find that I am much slower in the beginning of a book. I am thinking of the plot, of the characters and who they are, and where they are going. I often throw out a lot of the writing I start with, because the characters and plot improve as I write. Or perhaps I should say it is my hope they will improve as I write.

I think finally good writing gets out there, and people like it, and bad writing doesn't. Well, no. Bad writing does get out there 'cause some people like it.

I go to sleep thinking about my kids being spoiled and I wake up thinking about it.

Instead of thinking about work the next day or thinking about what you have to do, if you live in the moment you'll have some of the best times of your life.

Romance is thinking about your significant other, when you are supposed to be thinking about something else.

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

When I'm constructing a poem, I'm trying to write one good line after another. One solid line after another. You know a lot of the lines - some hold up better as lines than others. But I'm not thinking of just writing a paragraph and then chopping it up.

Our thinking tends to be hazy, hasty, narrow, or sprawling-causal terms for impulsive. Just like anything else, thinking skills require upkeep. If they aren't nourished, they'll fade away.

Positive thinking is a good attitude to have. But positive thinking without any skills is a load of crap.

I don't want to write poems that are just really clear about how I'm aware of all the traps involved in writing poetry; I don't want to write fiction that's about the irresponsibility of writing fiction and I've thrown out a lot of writing that I think was ultimately tainted by that kind of self-awareness.

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

Fairfield Porter who has been my model for art writing all along, said that if the most interesting thing about a work of art is its content, it's probably a failure. I think it's true that if you find yourself thinking about the meaning in an author's message, it's probably not very interesting as art. Obviously, this is a tough concept, because if you withdraw intention.

Thinking about the future and thinking about the past is really only a way of ignoring the present.

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.

'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my folder of notes - 'ideas for stories.' Eventually, I began to write it and wrote it fairly swiftly - in perhaps two months of fairly intense writing and rewriting. Most of my time writing is really re-writing.

I think there are a lot of similarities between writing and music. Music is much more direct and much more emotional and that's the level I want to be at when I'm writing. Writing is much more intellectual and indirect and abstract, in a way.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.

Writing is such a powerful tool. I believe everyone should be writing.

Stop thinking about the audience and what they may be thinking of your music. Just play the music.

Nothing pleases people more than to go on thinking what they have always thought, and at the same time imagine that they are thinking something new and daring: it combines the advantage of security and the delight of adventure.

When we're believing, we're not really thinking, because the belief has walls: "This is what I believe." So what I believe is like a box, and we're taking the energy of our thinking and putting into a box of beliefs, pretending that we're thinking. But we're really stifling our own energy. We create these mental stresses and frustrations, because we're blocking our spirit, so to speak.

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

The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself - and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.

Myrmecophaga jubata: The anteater. The existence of this predator demonstrates that thinking 71 percent of the time, as ants do, won't prevent you from being eaten. Thinking less than that, as humans do, will almost guarantee it.

No amount of thinking can stop thinking.

Thinking leads man to knowledge. He may see and hear, and read and learn, as much as he please; he will never know any of it, except that which he has thought over, that which by thinking he has made the property of his mind. Is it then saying too much if I say, that man by thinking only becomes truly man? Take away thought from man's life, and what remains?

And then writing, it was like I just found it, you know? Like you just found your favorite flavor of ice cream, all of a sudden there it is. 'This is what I should have been doing for the last thirty years. What was I thinking?' So I was, then I was in and then I had to just keep going with it.

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

You're thinking that you shouldn't have sex because you're celibate. So you just keep thinking about sex instead of enlightenment.

I think that probably the time that people stopped thinking of Starbuck as 'a woman' was when they stopped thinking of the old show.

Going through everything in my mind, I kept waking up in the middle of the night thinking Baltimore, thinking this is my fit, this is where I want to be, and they want me.

People confound, misuse, interchange thinking and speaking, not realizing that speaking is for communication and thinking is for action.

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

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

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

The writing that I have found to be most false is the writing that doesn't offer hope.

In teaching writing, I'm learning new things about writing.

Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

Music's always part of my writing. I think all art is interconnected. You can't create or experience one without its influences bleeding into another. In my writing, music's mostly something that feeds my inspiration and mood while I'm writing, but it's also taught me how to score scenes and even novels. The rise and fall of the storyline echoes the flow of a good piece of music.

Openness by the leader paves the way for ownership by the people. Without ownership, changes will be short term. Changing people's habits and ways of thinking is like writing instructions in the snow during a snowstorm. Every twenty minutes the instructions must be rewritten, unless ownership is given along with instructions.

Today we are apt to downplay or disregard the importance of good thinking to strong faith; and some, disastrously, even regard thinking as opposed to faith.

I love to write songs, but they don't come easy to me - I spend a lot of time writing really dumb stuff that I have to look at the next day and think, 'God, what was I thinking?' That's my process, is just to go through a lot of dumb stuff and hope that, after a lot of hard work, I'll find a good idea.

It's characteristic of democracy that majority rule is understood as being effective not only in politics but also in thinking. In thinking, of course, the majority is always wrong.

When I'm raising money, this fundraising, I'm thinking about the next fundraising. I'm thinking how I'm set up for it.

The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

During the years 1945-1965 (I am referring to Europe), there was a certain way of thinking correctly, a certain style of politicaldiscourse, a certain ethics of the intellectual. One had to be on familiar terms with Marx, not let one's dreams stray too far from Freud.... These were therequirements that made the strange occupation of writing and speaking a measure of truth about oneself and one's time acceptable.

The secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter.

There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.

As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking - or lack of thinking.

When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.

That's tangent, but I like the strategizing and thinking about how things are going to fall and thinking of different ways to engage with fans. Ultimately, the goal is for the music to be heard by as many people as possible.

Thinking through quotes, which to say scouring a range of texts for insight, is one way to outline the process of thinking/feeling through a subject.