Don't write for who your reader is. Write for what your reader wants to be.
To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.
The key for me with historical characters is they're interesting because they're human beings. A little bit of Hemingway goes a long way here, but journalists and writers should honestly look at their material and have a real interest, a real passion in what they want to write, and they should also have a lot of knowledge as well.
I think it goes without saying that young would-be playwrights in developmental workshops should be so lucky as to write plays as good as 'Waiting for Godot,' 'Uncle Vanya' or 'King Lear,' none of which would have existed without a decent plot.
I'm such a strong believer in making yourself happy. Almost in a selfish way. There are a lot of trends, and obviously you can get swept up into them. But I feel like if you just write songs you love, it can have trap beats in it or whatever's going on in the moment, but you don't stop loving songs.
You're a reader as well as a writer, so write what you'd want to read.
I always thought it'd be fun to write something, but it never was an ambition of mine, per se.
Normally, when I write a tour show, it's got a title that means something - a beginning, a middle and an end - and some kind of storyline and ideas going through it over two hours.
I'd like to write the way Matisse paints.
Broadway's never my end goal because of the plays I write. These are tough plays. Of course there's a lot of humor, but my goal is just to reach as wide an audience as possible, however that happens.
I write bars, for the musicians, because they have to be together.
We write in ways that, we generally hope, reflect real life, or at least look familiar to humans. And in life, recurring themes are a recurring theme. We never quite conquer a pet vice or a relationship pattern or a communication habit. We're haunted by our particular demons.
I learned to read and write and socialize in school, and that's pretty much it.
To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons.
It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.
You get older and come to the conclusion that it's a great gig making music. Even if you turn into an old gnarly fart, no one cares what you look like if you write good songs - the only gig is to sing well and perform.
I write the music because I can't really write lyrics. But I can write chords like Robin's never heard of. So I provide the music for them to add the lyrics to.
As soon as I began, it seemed impossible to write fast enough - I wrote faster than I would write a letter - two thousand to three thousand words in a morning, and I cannot help it.
I write to escape; to escape poverty.
I've made this decision not to talk to the press about anything that's gone on in my life, but just to write music about it. They can interpret it themselves.
If you ever want to know why I'm not on a record label, look at 'The X Factor!' Honestly, of all the people that strive to break barriers in music and do good things and write great lyrics, not one of them would ever pass the first round on any of these competitions.
My father being in the movie business, I thought being an actor would be great. But when I started singing to people in coffeehouses, you know, singing folk music and then, later, singing songs that I started to write myself, I felt more than an affinity for it. I felt a calling.
I don't write polite letters. I don't like to plea-bargain. I like to fight.
If someone had told me in high school that one day I'd write an historical novel, I would have rolled my eyes.
I did not have a chance to write novels until my youngest child started school fulltime.
In the theater, when people hear that you're writing a play, they want to know what it's all about, whether there's a role for them. You write it fairly quickly, and it becomes a group activity before you're really ready to have company.
I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.
My earliest attempts at writing were when I was seven. I would sit at the piano and transcribe the songs I heard on the radio. I'd change little things in the music and write different lyrics.
Your feelings so are important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you're heartbroken, but tomorrow you'll be in love again.
I was completely devoted to reading and books from the age of seven. It took until I was 18 to have the confidence to write poetry.
So when I write characters and situations and relationships, I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.
If I'm extra happy or excited, it'll take me an hour or two to write a song. Or, if I'm really sad or something, it will take me about a day. But I have a specific way of writing: I just listen to the beat. I think about what I'm going to write over the beat.
If I'm feeling like rock, we'll do some of that, and if I'm feeling some other way, we might do some of that. So, that's typically how I record and write and play music and anything else.
I never listen to music when I write. It's too much of a distraction.
Of course I planned to write the Great American Novel; that lasted about a week, at which point I decided I had nothing to say that could possibly qualify. So I wrote a romance instead.
I wanted to write about how people's beliefs shift.
