I write books to find out about things.
My mother's passion for something more, to write a different destiny for a dirt-poor farmer's daughter, was to shape my entire life.
Amanda Hocking and Hugh Howey have been successful in their self-publishing ventures. But notice that Hocking would prefer to write and hand over the editing, promotion, and selling to a traditional publisher.
I've been writing poems since I was in the Navy - to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners.
I think a lot of people think that my parents' deaths is why I write such sad songs, but that's not true. Those songs may just be the woman I am.
I was sitting in the toilet and I was by myself. I was tired of playing with the roller, so I said I'd better write a book.
The road, lyric-wise, is a trap, and a bore. Maybe it's interesting to me, but I don't think it's a connecting thing with other humans. What is there to write about? Truck stops, hotels, clubs?
If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.
Certainly I had a really terrible time with 'Emotionally Weird.' When I finished it, I thought, 'I can't write any more.'
My next project is to get back to that. Actually, to learn how to write poetry. I'm not kidding.
It's very selfish when I write. I'm not aware, ever, of writing for another person; I'm not even really aware of writing for myself.
I write sets of books, but I've also written a lot of orphans.
Different authors write different ways, have different relationships with their audiences, and those are all legitimate.
Writing a song is much like being an author. Yes, we all have tools to write (everyone has a brain I hope!), but that doesn't all of a sudden make us best selling authors.
With any story I write, I could actually write it from three or four different perspectives, which would end with a completely different moral at the end.
I like writing a lot more than I used to. I used to find it scary but now I've got used to it once it gets going. I used to find it hard to start. Fear of the blank page. The first thing you write down won't bear any relation to what's in your head and that's always disappointing.
Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.
I started out life as a writer, and writers write in part because they don't want to talk.
I write reviews of science books for the Boston Globe, so I like to give science books.
When I write a book, I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader. It's not my business whether people like or dislike it.
I think it's a mistake to think, 'Am I going to write a young adult book, or do I desperately want to write a book for adults?' I think the better ambition is to try to write someone's favorite book, because those categorizations of adult, young adult, become kind of superfluous.
I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.
In my next life, I want to be tall and thin, parallel park and make good coffee. But for now, I have lots of stuff to work out in my life, but I'll have that until the day I die. I want to write more books.
The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write.
I used to object to being called an Indian writer, and would always say I was a writer who happened to be an Indian, and who happened to write about Indians.
Parents should watch what their children watch and not use TV as a babysitter. If a show is objectionable they should turn it OFF. They should write the president of the network and tell him they are never going to watch that program again and why.
I write it to get it out of me. I don't write it to remember it.
I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so I write for the people.
You just kind of have faith. If that sounds kind of mystical, it's because I really don't know how it works, but I trust that it does. I try to write the way I read, in order to find out what happens next.
My friends, we all improvise together usually. So we write what I think is a good script but always leave a lot of room to find stuff on the day; and we always do find something. That's the advantage to having actors who are, in their own right, writers.
One of the nice things about 'The New Yorker' is they let you write stories that sometimes end up almost half a book.
I meet people who are in movies, and the stuff that they write is terrible, but nobody tells them that because they're famous. So I worry that my stuff might be like that, too.
If they're going to write a story they're going to write the story whether it's true or not.
Well, I would definitely give up performing... But I would still sit down in an office and pretend to write with Dawn, even if we never produced anything, because it's just hilarious. I would miss that.
There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.
Composers love to write for symphony orchestras because the symphony is the Rolls Royce of musical instruments.
