Top 1200 Writing Things Down Quotes & Sayings - Page 19

I flipped down the visor so I could check myself in the mirror, and something small and heavy dropped into my lap. I froze, my breath stuck in my throat. What—? Gingerly, I looked down. It wasn’t a grenade. It was a key ring. One key was for this van. I looked at it blankly. “Well, that’ll simplify things,” Fang said.

I know there's a lot of competition in the world of magazines and newspapers and we have to make headlines and be sensational and sell, and saying bad things about me is going to sell more papers than writing good things about me.

Writing can be a lonely business. But gradually your characters, or the scenes and peopl from your past, begin to rise up around you, and you find yourself writing your way out of loneliness, writing into your own company.

At first, teaching was more or less a straightforward way of making a living and having access to institutional resources while writing - aka libraries. And that was not inconsiderable. But it didn't in any way touch the writing. Maybe it would push the writing aside sometimes, but mostly it was fine.

Little projects - not feature - film projects - you know, theater things, writing things, and jobs like doing rewriting for money, stuff like that. I don't recommend it. It's not a schedule that I'd want, although it was really good for me in a lot of ways. I became a better writer.

There are things I like about fancy Southern food and there are things I really love from just down-home Southern cooking. So mixing those two together would probably be right up my alley.

My agents and my managers are very good at whittling things down to the things they think I would be good at and that I'd respond well to, and that includes theater, TV and film. Whatever it is, if the material is right for me, then I'll go for it.

What I find cool about being a banned author is this: I'm writing books that evoke a reaction, books that, if dropped in a lake, go down not with a whimper but a splash.

There are times when I just can't bring myself to sit down and write and I'm never sure whether it's pure laziness or lack of courage - there's always the thought in the back of my mind that my writing won't be good enough.

The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down.

When I'm writing a song, things are always popping into my head, it's not so direct. It feels more like I'm in a room and there's this whole big jumble of clothes on the floor and it's like choosing what to wear. There are a lot of different things in there and you kind of pull something out and think, "No, that's not right," or you're like, "Yes I'll put this on with this."

I didn't have to keep a bloody journal. It's terribly boring keeping a journal anyway. I hate it. You spend more time writing down life instead of living it.

I write when the urge hits me, getting the words down as fast as I can type and then I step back from what I just wrote and start a dialectical process where I begin challenging my own writing.

There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content.

There should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with. If there’s a window, draw the curtains or pull down the shades unless it looks out at a blank wall.

Everyone thinks they can be a writer. Most people dont understand whats involved. The real writers persevere. The ones that dont either dont have enough fortitude and they probably wouldnt succeed anyway, or they fall in love with the glamour of writing as opposed to the writing of writing.

Writing is performative - and while, yes, the words in essence will be there "forever," poems are often about ecstatic moments rather than trying to pin down a particular truth of an event.

If Darwin could get into a submarine and see what I've seen, thousand of feet beneath the ocean, I am just confident that he would be inspired to sit down and start writing all over again.

I think one of the good things about writing novels is that you always start from scratch.

Good rock 'n' roll is something that makes you feel alive. It's something that's human, and I think that most music today isn't. ... To me good rock 'n' roll also encompasses other things, like Hank Williams and Charlie Mingus and a lot of things that aren't strictly defined as rock 'n' roll. Rock 'n' roll is an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's a way of doing things, of approaching things. Writing can be rock 'n' roll, or a movie can be rock 'n' roll. It's a way of living your life.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the patience not to strangle my mother-in-law, chop her into little pieces, and dump them down a sewer.

I'm doing one of three things: I'm writing. I'm staring out the window. Or I'm writhing on the floor.

I have withdrawn not only from men, but from affairs, especially my own affairs; I am working for later generations, writing down some ideas that may be of assistance to them.

I ran to Rachel [Comey]'s show and on the way I found a potted tree - an umbrella tree - on the street. I always think things are going to be way more intimate than they are and there aren't going to be a lot of people around. I don't know why I think this. I'm always shocked at what a hoopla things are. They were like, 'Hurry up.' So I put the tree down and I see Rachel and she's like, 'Hurry up, sit down.'

Writing has always been my go-to form of expression. Whenever I was going through something as a kid, I would write it down and I would turn it into a poem.

In any offense you put me in, when things break down, I'm going to get outside the pocket and move ... West Coast, East Coast. It doesn't matter. I'm taking off if I have to, to make things happen.

Listen up. Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside.

You love the game, but it's hard to do the things you do when you're feeling like you're a leg down all the time, literally. Or you're always beat up, even coming into the season. So it's just not as fun when you're down, and you got to work your way up. And you can't really get there because you're so beat up.

deep down...she's a good woman...you should be proud of her." When I told my mom about this, she just looked very sad because he could never say those things to her. Not ever. Not even when he walked her down the aisle.

I always enjoyed writing music; things pop into my head every day.

And then, 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?' Those things just became so important to the character. You realize that the more you read it, if I read the book again today, I'd find 100 other things that I missed last time. It's a constantly changing book.

People who've written about Abraham Lincoln's writing emphasize how logical he was. His writing was a syllogistic tool. He would say, if A, then B, and he would reason through it. His late writing especially is so tight and so beautifully reasoned.

I like writing about big turning points, where professional and personal lives coalesce, where the boundaries are coming down, and you're faced with a set of choices which will change life forever.

I started out in life as a poet, I was only writing poetry all through my 20s, it wasn't until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels, I liked them.

Writing isn't a job so much as a compulsion. I've been writing since I was very young because for some strange reason, I must write, and also because when I write, I feel more alive and closer to the world than when I'm not writing.

I love writing. I feel more connected to that than I do a lot of the other things.

Rather than shutting down free speech, we need to broaden it, to make it possible for young people to say even the things we dislike so we can talk them down. And we need politicians to articulate a picture of the future that includes all of us. Not British values but shared human values.

As journalism dies, I kind of feel like I want some skills besides writing. I'd like to be able to write movies or host TV shows or whatever. Things that I might actually not inherently like quite as much, but are interesting and fun things to do. A good backup plan.

I love writing about things I know, and I like to be very honest in my music.

I am trying to make, before I get through, a picture of the whole world--or as much of it as I have seen. Boiling it down always, rather than spreading it out too thin. (On Writing.)

When you're writing with someone else it helps you think of things you never would've thought of.

I've always viewed writing as an outlet for being vulnerable and all that comes with that. You are able to let things all out.

Sometimes I see people writing the most ridiculous things about me.

Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears.

There are certain things that I will do viscerally to affect people emotionally, with speed changes and sound, and various other things. Sure there are links; the same kind of sensibilities went into it and I worked on writing that script as well so there was an emphasis on a minimalisation of dialogue as far as possible, to focus on the visual and to put it in another language, of course.

But all good things come to an end, often a sad angry miserable end. The cause for such an end can usually be whittled down to one of three things: money, sickness, love lost.

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written.

Writing a song is a personal thing, and you have to have a lot of trust to try things and not be embarrassed.

I started dealing with my emotional pain by writing. I always had been a writer, but just not songs. Saying things on paper that I would never, ever say, and saying things to myself, admitting things to myself, about myself and my personality, just putting it on paper, is how I deal with emotional pain.

I prefer writing in the mornings, so to that extent I have a routine. I do reading and other things in the afternoon.

Now that I'm staring down the barrel of the last act of my life, I'm less excited about control and solo effort, and I resent the way the business aspects interfere with my space for creative writing.

Generosity of spirit is worthwhile. I've had many requests over the years to attend things, to sing somewhere. I try not to turn things down if I don't have to. The easiest thing is to say you can't manage it, but often it's more rewarding to agree to do something for someone.

[Rejection] made me quit writing once. For six months. I started up again when my then seven-year-old son asked me to start writing again because I was too grumpy when I wasn't writing.

My intention was always to direct and writing things just became convenient and happened.

The day it comes out, there's already things that you start to go, 'Oh, I should have done that a little differently.' You start to make a list in your head. I actually write things down -- what I'm going to do next time.

Pussy power's pulling me down, down, down, down. When it's there and I can't have it, I get real real rabid.

A lot of my writing is wish-fulfilment, making things the way I want them to be.

So little of what makes a democracy work is written down. So much of it is just the things you don't do. There are a lot of things that a prime minister or a president can do and they don't do them because it never occurs to them to do them.

There is nothing you can do except try to write it the way that it was. So you must write each day better than you possibly can and use the sorrow that you have now to make you know how the early sorrow came. And you must always remember the things you believed because if you know them they will be there in the writing and you won’t betray them. The writing is the only progress you make.