Top 1200 Writing Nonfiction Quotes & Sayings - Page 14

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.

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

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.

All writers have periods when they stop writing, when they cannot write, and this is always painful and terrible because writing is like breathing.

When you are writing, of course, you have to do all that writing and correcting for yourself. When I was a librarian it was expected that I would know about a wide range of books.

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

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.

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.

You start by writing to live. You end by writing so as not to die.

Not-writing is a good deal worse than writing.

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

There are more and more women writing. And there are more and more good male writers who are writing and who learned and decided it's worth writing for women.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

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 started writing when I was around 6. I say 'writing,' but it was really just making up stuff! I started writing and doing my own thing. I didn't really know what a demo was or anything like that, so I started getting interested in studio gear and started learning about one instrument at a time. My first instrument was an accordion.

On the Internet, everyone is writing. There is a great flowering of writing.

THE WRITER can get free of his writing only by using it, that is, by reading oneself. As if the aim of writing were to use what is already written as a launching pad for reading the writing to come. Moreover, what he has written is read in the process, hence constantly modified by his reading. The book is an unbearable totality. I write against a background of facets.

I've seen a lot of the United States, having stayed in so many different cities and towns for work. It's such a strange and fascinating country, and instead of learning about it through a textbook, I would rather discover its history and traditions and institutions through fiction and nonfiction writers.

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.

Generally, I find that when you're writing and having fun with the writing, that energy and dynamism is going to come out in the text one way or another.

Robert Mapplethorpe asked me to write our story the day before he died. I had never written a book of nonfiction, and so it took me almost two decades to write that book.

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.

If you have a dream of writing, that's wishful thinking. If you have a commitment to writing, that's the way to make your dreams come true.

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

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

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.

Tina Fey, a performer and head writer for 'Saturday Night Live,' has deftly adapted Rosalind Wiseman's nonfiction dissection of teenage girl societal interaction, 'Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence.'

Do not beat up on yourself. Do not criticize your writing as lousy, inadequate, stupid, or any of the evil epithets that you are used to heaping on yourself. Such self-bashing is never useful. If you indulge in it, your writing doesn't stand a chance. So when your mind turns on you, turn it back, stamp it down, shut it up, and keep 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.

Through all this other stuff I was doing, I always went back to the writing, and it was writing that made me feel whole, complete.

In a sense, journalism can be both helpful and detrimental to a writer of fiction because the kind of writing you need to do as a journalist is so different. It has to be clear, unambiguous, concise, and as a writer often you are trying to do things that are more ambiguous. I find that writing fiction is often an antidote to reading and writing too much journalism.

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.

Writing a whole series was a crash course in screenwriting, which is a very different muscle to standup comedy writing.

I love a lot of American writers, but I think that for the most part the scope of what's accepted as great American writing is very limited. What we have is good, but it's limited. There's not enough engagement with the world. Our literature's not adventurous enough. The influence of MFA writing tends to make things repetitive. The idea that writing can be taught has changed the whole conversation in the U.S.

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.

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.

Writing books isn't a drastic departure from writing for the stage.

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

And there are two types of stories. One type is one's own story. The other type is telling the stories of others. Thanks to this genre, writers of nonfiction can now use the tools of the reporter, the points of view and ear for dialog of a novelist, and the passion and wordplay of the poet.

I would rather not write if I'm depressed, or am going through a breakup, or I've had some disappointment, or I'm having a family issue. You don't want to just put out an open wound. Sometimes that just isn't even really good writing. Good writing should be good writing and storytelling and not just therapy or someone's personal journal.

If a reader believes that everything in nonfiction or history is just objectively true, I don't really know what to tell them, except that at least in fiction, the choice of what perspective and bias to tell a given story from - which is always a deliberate choice - is foregrounded and clear.

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

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.

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.

My father always told me I should be a writer, and I found I loved writing my autobiography; writing is such an interesting process.

People don't stress enough that when they're writing lyrics, they are writing.

There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

Beyond that, I seem to be compelled to write science fiction, rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature, both fiction and nonfiction.

The first writing of the human being was drawing, 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.

Once I get my writing done, then I can turn my attention elsewhere - and not the other way around. The writing has to be the foundation.

Writing is a sedentary gig unless one has a treadmill desk. But I have long believed writing and working out are complementary disciplines.

For me, writing is something that I need to do. If I'm not writing, I'm not happy.

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

They ask me what I'm writing for - I'm writing to show you what we're fighting for.

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

In my writing classes, I don't outlaw any genre writing.