To Write Quotes

“Do you have to do murder?
Do we have to do murder? Sure we have to do murder. There are only two subjects
a woman's chastity, and murder. Nobody's interested in chastity any more. Murder's all we got to write stories about.”

— Leslie Ford

“Even when there were good wars to write about, writers such as Jane Austen wrote novels concerning marriage. They usually went like this:
'You're being a real jerk.'
'Sorry about that. I was secretly helping you.'
'Oh, you're wonderful! And you have so much money! You're my new favorite cousin!'
'Let's get married.
The End.”

— Dan Wilbur

“Publishers always clamour for the books that no one has ever written, and turn a cold shoulder on them as soon as they're written. If St Paul were living now they would pester him to write an Epistle to the Esquimaux, but no London publisher would dream of reading his Epistle to the Ephesians.”

— Saki

“I appreciate another Good Reads member adding my book to their 'To Read' list. But I consider it rude to immediately add the same book to your 'Not interested' list. Ergo, exactly why did you bother? So do me a favour and kindly remove my book from your 'To read' list. Then, kindly attempt to write your own book so I can return the favour. Thank you!”

— Me

“Well, that's it." I said after we had waited for another five minutes and found ourselves still in a state of pleasantly welcome existence. "The ChronoGuard has shut itself down and time travel is as it should be: technically, logically, and theoretically ... impossible." "Good thing, too," reply Landon. "It always made my head ache. In fact, I was thinking of doing self help book for science-fiction novelists eager to write about time travel. It would consist of a single word: Don't.”

— Jasper Fforde

“I never walk into the studio and say, I'm going to write a song called ... 'X' or called 'Slow Me Down.' I write a ton of lyrics, often the title is somewhere in those 10 pages of ... I call it brain vomit. It's kind of like whatever comes out of my head and I'm unabashedly just writing it down.”

— Emmy Rossum

“Full-blooded romantic love I wouldn't be able to write about.”

— Alan Bennett

“When a writer first begins to write, he or she feels the same
first thrill of achievement that the young gambler or oboe
player feels: winning a little, losing some, the gambler sees the
glorious possibilities, exactly as the young oboist feels an indescribable
thrill when he gets a few phrases to sound like real
music, phrases implying an infinite possibility for satisfaction
and self-expression. As long as the gambler or oboist is only
playing at being a gambler or oboist, everything seems possible.
But when the day comes that he sets his mind on becoming a professional, suddenly he realizes how much there is to learn, how little he knows.”

— John Gardner

“With a book called 'Keeping Score,' I really did want to write a book about the Korean War, because I felt that it is the least understood war in the American cultural imagination. So I set out with the idea that Americans didn't know much about the Korean War and that I was going to try to fix a tiny bit of that.”

— Linda Sue Park

“If you have someone in your life that you are grateful for - someone to whom you want to write another heartfelt, slanted, misspelled thank you note - do it. Tell them they made you feel loved and supported. That they made you feel like you belonged somewhere and that you were not a freak. Tell them all of that. Tell them today.”

— Lisa Jakub

“I've had to write in a different way because I'm not in a bad place and I'm not heartbroken, so there's no one I want revenge on.”

— Boy George

“Above all, I hope I have dispelled the bleak and imbecilic idea that the aim of writing is to express yourself clearly in plain, simple English using as few words as possible. This is a fiction, a fib, a fallacy, a fantasy, and a falsehood. To write for mere utility is as foolish as to dress for mere utility ... Clothes and language can be things of beauty, I would no more write without art because I didn't need to than I would wander outdoors naked just because it was warm enough.”

— Mark Forsyth

“In life, everything just happens, and I believe even before we are born that our role in life has already been determined. My main ambition is to continue to write music, which helps me to evolve in a spiritual sense and hopefully to inspire others.”

— Gerry Rafferty

“Go out there and get rich. Get so obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes, your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have to write.”

— Mark Cuban

“It's more difficult to write a song about having your heart ripped out of your chest while you're in love. Because it lacks honesty. And the honesty comes through in the music, it really does.”

— Chad Kroeger

“Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”

— Haruki Murakami

“I start with the subject matter I want to write about. Then I make a musical base for that and create an atmosphere with the music. Once I've done that, the lyrics come last.”

— Midge Ure

“The written word held a power she almost revered: to be able to write so as to influence the hearts and minds of other readers seemed nothing short of a miracle.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

“I'm not saying you have to be totally despondent or anything, but ... in New York, it's cold sometimes; it rains sometimes; even if everything in your life is great, bad weather can set the mood. You can write songs in New York because it's not always perfect. To write a good song, things can't be perfect.”

— Tom Odell

“I've always been trying to write songs that hit you in the stomach but ones that make people feel like things will be just fine.”

— Nathaniel Rateliff

“My sisters, we didn't like each other as kids. We were scared of each other, I think, but we've grown to love each other. It was fun to write about these sisters who were supposed to hate each other but really don't.”

— Dorothy Allison

“At the end of 1795 and beginning of 1796, I was ordered to write to the Church ministers.”

— Joanna Southcott

“When I was 30 or so - by that time I had become an assistant D.A. - I decided I would try to write a novel. To be clear: I did not decide to become a novelist. Honestly, it never crossed my mind that I could actually earn a living as a professional novelist.”

— William Landay

“Sometimes even when the book is over I don't know who's good and who's bad. It's really more interesting, I think, to write about gray characters than it is to write about black and white.”

— Harlan Coben

“Life being so short, and the possible books to write so many, it's good to function by night as well as by day; but would anybody become a writer if they realised at the outset what the working hours were?”

— Hilary Mantel

“When I was with the Labor Party, I'd get into trouble because the party bosses determined that some of what I wrote, or proposed to write about, wasn't conducive to their policies or to electoral success.”

— Ayaan Hirsi Ali

“Any strongly marked expression of face on the part of a chief actor in a scene of great interest to whom many eyes are directed, will be unconsciously imitated by the spectators. Her forehead was painfully anxious and intent as she gave this evidence, and, in the pauses when she stopped for the Judge to write it down, watched its effect upon the counsel for and against. Among the lookers-on there was the same expression in all quarters of the court; insomuch, that a great majority of the foreheads there, might have been mirrors reflecting the witness,”

— Charles Dickens

“It's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing. I'm not a musician. I never thought of performing in a rock n' roll band. I was just drawn in. It was like being called to duty - I was called to duty, and I did my duty as best as I could.”

— Patti Smith

“I wanted to write stories I wanted to read, that I and my friends related to.”

— Jane Green

“I don't go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it's contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.”

— Steven Wright

“It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.”

— George Orwell

“ART
Art is that thing having to do only with itself-the product of a successful attempt to make a work of art. Unfortunately, there are no expamples of art, nor good reasons to think that it will ever exist. (Everything that has been made has been made with a purpose, teverything with an end exists outside of that thing, i.e., "I want to sell this", or "I want this to make me famous and loved", or "I want this to make me whole", or worse, "I want this to make others whole.") And yet we continue to write, paint, sculpt and compose. Is this foolish of us?”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

“I can plunk out enough chords to write a song, but I'm completely afraid to play guitar in front of other people. It's a fear of failure, I guess.”

— Mandy Moore

“There's always something new with sex. We lived in a world without Viagra, now we live in a world with Viagra. We lived in a world without blowjobs and anilingus in the Oval Office, and then it happens and you get to write about it. We live in a world where now the government is screwing with contraception and holding back vaccines that could save 4,000 women's lives a year, and you get to write about that. It's not as much fun as anilingus in the Oval Office, but what are you going to do? If you pay attention, there's always something new, and it's always really invigorating.”

— Dan Savage

“The kind of juvenile story I like best to write
and read, too, for the matter of that
is a good, jolly one, "art for art's sake," or rather "fun for fun's sake," with no insidious moral hidden away in it like a pill in a spoonful of jam!”

— L.M. Montgomery

“Readers re-create any story to suit their own needs. They re-clothe the story in their own shirts. Put simply: just as we write the story we need to write, they read the story they need to read.”

— Jane Yolen

“I'm always wondering what is the job that gives the writer the most amount of time to write. I still don't know what the answer is as someone who has taught and is now working at a grocery store.”

— Ali Liebegott

“I have a mouse, but don't have a mouse driver for MINIX and have never felt the need to write one. Typing "rm x y z" is a lot faster than clicking five times and then having to convince the system that you really, truly, mean it and this is not a mistake and that you are consenting adult over 18 and that you completely understand the consequences and you still want to do it.”

— Andrew S. Tanenbaum

“I am dissatisfied with everything I have ever written and regard it all only as a preparation for that one work which probably I don't have it in me to write but which I hope I can go on trying for.”

— Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

“It isn't often that a writer of superlative skills knows enough about flying to write well about it.”

— Samuel Hynes

“I wanted to write; I sought all possible paths of personal liberation, but I could never sacrifice a living instant of life for the sake of a line to be written, my balance for the sake of a manuscript, a storm within me for the sake of a poem. I loved life itself too much for this.”

— Nina Berberova

“I have always wanted to write in such a way that will make people think, Why, I've always thought that but never found the words for it.”

— Pamela Hansford Johnson

“I think the advantage we had with "MacGruber" is the speed we had to put it together. We had a such a short period to write the movie and such a post-[production] period, it was almost like the way that the show worked, where everything is happening so fast you have to go with your gut.”

— Will Forte

“The key thing is, don't worry about if anyone is reading you or not. Figure out your voice and figure out what you want to write about, what you're good at, what you like doing.”

— Will Leitch

“The Polar Express was the easiest of my picture book manuscripts to write ... Once I realized the train was going to the North Pole, finding the story seemed less like a creative effort than an act of recollection. I felt, like the storys narrator, that I was remembering something, not making it up.”

— Chris Van Allsburg

“Often turn the stile [correct with care], if you expect to write anything worthy of being read twice.
[Lat., Saepe stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint Scripturus.]”

— Horace

“I like to write about certain things that if they are not written about are not going to exist.”

— James Salter

“The critics suppose that it is easy to write a play. They aren't aware that writing a good play is difficult and writing a bad one is twice as hard.”

— Anton Chekhov

“So, you see, it's a real chore for me to write a book review because it's like a contest. It's like I'm writing that book review for every bad book reviewer I've ever known and it's a way of saying [thrusts a middle finger into the air] this is how you ought to do it. I like to rub their noses in it.”

— John Irving

“I try to write songs just for the song itself. I don't try and think about where it's going to end up, that way you're writing for the good of the song.”

— Jon Foreman