Write Something Quotes

We all start out with the same alphabet. We are all unique. Talent is not the most important thing
discipline and dedication are. Craft can be learned but desire and longing are innate. Despite the demands of school and just being young, try to write SOMETHING every day
a description, a captured emotion, a simile, a metaphor. Read, for crying out loud! A writer must read the way a ball player must go to the ballfield every day to practice. Everything is possible in this world of ours
and so's publication. ~ Robert Cormier

And if you write something that cheers someone up when they're feeling down, doesn't that change the world? ~ Meg Cabot

In America, where writers are preoccupied with the craft of writing, I always try to introduce this concept of the badly written good story. Turning the hierarchy around and putting passion on top and not craft, because when you just focus on craft, you can write something that is very sterile. It looks beautiful, but soulless. So I warn them that, often in writing programs, articulation and clarity are more important than what you actually say . . . And you say, "It's so well-written, but who gives a fuck?" For certain, the guy who wrote it doesn't give a fuck. It's not something that has to do with his life; it's just something well-written and illuminating, and writing is not about that. The best stories you usually hear are stories that people feel some type of urgency about . . .

Nobody else in the world would look at writing as craftsmanship - it's totally this Protestant hardworking ethic. You go into this kind of infinite space of imagination and you fence yourself in with all kinds of laws. Why do we have to keep playing this strange game? ~ Etgar Keret

If you enjoy knocking self-publishing writers, write something better first, then, knock on! ~ Robert Scott

I want to write something so simply about love or about pain that even as you are reading you feel it and as you read you keep feeling it and though it be my story it will be common, though it be singular it will be known to you so that by the end you will think - no, you will realize - that it was all the while yourself arranging the words, that it was all the time words that you yourself, out of your heart had been saying. ~ Mary Oliver

To write something you have to feel it and know it, and that's not comfortable. ~ Michael Morpurgo

It's usually quite easy to shrug and write something else instead. ~ Charles Stross

If I manage to write something that I consider good and valuable in a particular place, that spot automatically has a special aura for me. In Albania, there are two cities where I have written the majority of my work: Gjirokaster, my home city, and Tirana. ~ Ismail Kadare

...as soon as you think of yourself as teaching contemplation to others, you make another mistake. No one teaches contemplation except God, who gives it. The best you can do is write something that will serve as an occasion for someone else to realize what God wants of him. ~ Thomas Merton

If you want to write something of length, however modern and radical, you must live the life of an elderly gentleman of the 1950s. ~ Arthur Smith

Still, I kept writing. I had no guarantee that I would someday win awards for writing. Heavens, the only person during that time who seemed to think I could write something worth publishing was my loyal husband. But I always remembered the professor from graduate school who urged me to write and who recommended me for that first writing assignment in 1964. When I protested to Sara Little that I didn't want to add another mediocre writer to the world, she gently reminded me that if I didn't dare mediocrity, I would never write anything at all. ~ Katherine Paterson

There are certain topics songwriters stay away from because it's hard to go there. I didn't sit down and go, 'I want to write something about my dad now.' ~ Robert Coppola Schwartzman

When you write something it has to hit the level that you accept as being good. ~ Will Champion

You always hope you'll surprise somebody with the work. If you write something human and appealing, the perfect reader could be anyone. ~ Sarah Hall

If you've taken the time to write something, then people should be given the opportunity to read it ~ Martin Rothery

The inspiration for my novels comes from the depths of a creative well, based on asking myself questions over and over. I try to write something different each time I sit down to write; I try to surprise the readers. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Even if you're in the thick of revising another work, write something new. Something small. It's important to keep telling yourself stories. ~ Don Roff

I am just diving into life again. I just have nothing new to offer right now as an idea for a book. I feel like if I were to write something, I would probably repeat the same idea in a different story. ~ Karan Bajaj

All I can do is knuckle down, write something really good, and hope someone responds to it. ~ Stephnie Weir

I feel very lucky that when I'm burnt out of acting I take to the pen and I write something I want to direct. ~ Lake Bell

I would love to write something that people would still read 50 or 100 years from now. That comes with growing older, I think. ~ Charles Kuralt

I don't write songs that don't affect me on some level, because I figure if I am not moved by it, if its not something that I have a longing to celebrate or to be reminded of, if it doesn't affect me, then how can I possibly think it is going to affect somebody else. My touchstone is write something that matters. ~ Amy Grant

I pretty much drink a cup of coffee, write in my journal for a while, and then sit at a computer in my office and torture the keys. My one saving grace as a writer is that, if I'm having trouble with the novel I'm writing, I write something else, a poem or a short story. I try to avoid writer's block by always writing something. ~ Jess Walter

It's scary when you get to a point where you write these songs that people like, and then you think, "Am I ever going to be able to write something better than that?" ~ Bethany Cosentino

It all adds up; never discount your efforts, because small efforts build big things. One word doesn't make a novel, but one word does begin a novel, and from that small beginning everything else follows. Even if it's just 'The', write something on that blank page. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

I don't think you should write something as long as a novel around anything that is not of the gravest concern to you and everybody else and for me this is always the conflict between an attraction for the Holy and the disbelief in it that we breathe in with the air of the times. ~ Flannery O'Connor

The rain always makes me wonder
What is it that the clouds ponder?
Will I write something tonight?
But I don't want to miss the thunder! ~ Avijeet Das

Sometimes I would write something that was so private, people would say, 'Make it more universal.' I never liked that idea. I always thought the more personal a song was, the more people would want to hear it. ~ Jane Wiedlin

Clockwork Vendetta is not steampunk; it is steamfun. I can't take myself so seriously as to write something truly punk in the true sense of the word. ~ Gabbo De La Parra

Fuck Tris. I would give body parts to have a guy write something like that for me. My kidney? Oh, both of them? Here, Nick, they're yours - just write more for me. I'll give you a start: boy in punk club asks strange girl to be his girlfriend for five minutes, girl kisses boy, boy kisses back, boy then meets girl - what did you notice about this girl? Nick, let's hear some lyrics. Please? Ready. Set. Go. ~ Rachel Cohn

I had to write something and couldn't think of a plot, so I decided to write a Cinderella story because it already had a plot! Then, when I thought about Cinderella's character, I realized that she was too much of a goody-two-shoes for me, and I would hate her before I finished ten pages. ~ Gail Carson Levine

It's very nice to be able to write something you don't have to get four other people to agree with before it can become authoritative. ~ Brian Lamb

The thing about the Internet is that you can write something ... for a very narrow audience and make a living at it. ~ Randall Munroe

The only really good piece of advice I have for my students is, 'Write something you'd never show your mother or father.' And you know what they say? 'I could never do that!' ~ Lorrie Moore

Live your life like the novels that you love to read. Only do the things that when you look back, you are proud of what you accomplished, feel good about how you treated others and didn't regret not doing to trying something. Every day is a new chapter, write something. ~ Taylor Berke

There's something, I think, that gets lost when we write something - something gets lost in the translation. So I speak everything out, and it's more important how it sounds. And applying that to more formal aspects of writing. ~ James Frey

Amazing, life-altering anonymous picture quotes on FaceBook: Are they created by graphic designers who steal quotes or don't bother to research the author, or are they original and just have exceptionally less ego than I do? Cos if I ever write something that brilliant it's gonna have flashing headlights. ~ Fierce Dolan

I'm an immigrant and I've always wanted to write something about America. ~ Peter Jennings

If you write a bad book, mobs do not show up with pitchforks and torches - and odds are you didn't write something bad. ~ Dan Alatorre

It's not so much that I want to direct but that I have to. When I write something it terrifies me that if I give it to someone else and it doesn't turn out as it could have done, I'd feel as if I'd orphaned my baby. ~ Peter Mullan

It was my mother who bought me green ink for the first time, along with the fountain pen she gave me as a gift to mark my graduation from high school.
When I asked 'Why green?' she laughed and shrugged. 'I don't know, maybe just because it's different from black and blue.'
My father smirked. 'It's different from black and blue!' Madam insists that all of her things be different from those of other people.'
My mother looked at him for a few moments and then turned to me. Nowadays she had to look up at me to meet my eyes, and I had to lean down to kiss her. She said, 'Write something, see if you like it.'
On the corner of the Alik newspaper that was delivered to our house in the afternoon for my father, I wrote, 'Green ink is different from all other inks. I like people and things that are different. ~ Zoya Pirzad

In this profession mistakes are all a part of it. If you write something flawlessly you've done something wrong. ~ Eric T. Benoit

My artistic goal was to write something that's one hundred percent real and true to me and to this world. I tried to touch on truths that really connect with people from every avenue of life. Ultimately, when you write from a vantage point of faith, humility and openness to the world around you, people have to respond because those same truths are instilled in them. Honestly, I don't have any agenda other than being sincere, real, and passionate about these songs and the music I make. ~ Mat Kearney

I always tell myself, 'you can write anything, but first you have to write something'. ~ Kevan Duke

I would rather make fun of things, and I'm struggling against an inborn fatalism . . . The creative impulse is such a fragile thing, but we have to create now. We owe it to ourselves to do the work. I want to encourage you. If you aspire to write, put aside all the niceties and sureties about what art should be and write something that makes the scales fall from our eyes. Forget the tired axioms about showing and telling, about sense of place - any possible obstruction - and write to destroy complacency, to rattle people, to help people, first and foremost yourself. Lodge your ideas like glass shards in the minds of everyone who would have you believe there's no hope. And read, as often and as violently as you can. If you have friends, as I do, who tacitly believe that it's too much of a chore to read a book, just one fucking book, from start to finish, smash every LCD they own. This is an opportunity. There's too much at stake now to pretend that everything is okay. ~ Dan Piepenbring

I had an idea to write something set back around the Civil War era, but I was just way too ignorant to think I could start it any time soon. ~ John Brandon

I'll think of the idea and then I'll write something down, then within that there will be a joke or two which is the original thing which I thought was funny. ~ David Cross

I need you to write something down, he said. It was, he said, for his new book, not for mine, a point he stressed because I was at the time researching a book that involved sports ... When I gave him the note the next day he said "You can use it if you want to."
What did he mean?
Did he know he would not write the book?
Did he have some apprehension, a shadow? Why had he forgotten to bring note cards to dinner that night? Had he not warned me that the ability to make a note when something came to mind was the difference between being able to write and not being to write? ~ Joan Didion

Each time you write something, part of you grows. You're training your artistic muscles to find your voice. ~ Pen Densham

I want to write something that means something to someone ... the reminds them of what a second, a moment, really is ... or that assures them that we are just as lost as they are. I want to write an emotion they are too fragile to let loose, so that my words can do the expression for them, the feeling for them. I want to write beyond the basics and the cliches ... I want to write you, I want to write a long walk on a starry night, I want to write an exhale or an inhale ... or suffocation.
I want to write as clear as my voice could be heard ... that is, if I had anything to say. ~ Augusten Burroughs

An audience is a community. The published word is a declaration of membership in that community and also of a willingness to contribute something meaningful to it.
So choose your audience. Write something. ~ Atul Gawande

Directing is something I've sort of always felt like I'd like to do at one point, and I thought the best way to start it is to write something myself or with someone and I'd go from there. My own material. ~ Luke Evans

Tulips come up in spring for no reason. Of course, you planted bulbs and now in April the earth warms up. But why? For no reason except gravity. Why gravity? For no reason. And why did you plant red tulip bulbs to begin with? For beauty, which is itself and has no reason. So the world is empty. Things rise and fall for no reason. And what a great opportunity that is! You can start writing again at any minute. Let go of all your failures and sit down and write something great. Or write something terrible and feel great about it. ~ Natalie Goldberg

What would it be like to fall all that way? Would you scream? Would you have time to shut your eyes before you hit the ground? And when you landed, you would look like a crumpled thing – not real, kind of like a rag doll in clothes – and one of your shoes would have fallen off and you wouldn't move at all. There wouldn't be much blood, only a thin trickle from the corner of your mouth. People would rush over to you, bend over you, and someone would pull out a mobile phone and call an ambulance. By the time the ambulance arrived, a small gaggle of bystanders would have formed and one of the would be looking up, pointing at the third-floor balcony. When the ambulance arrived, the green paramedics would put a fat white collar around your neck, press your chest and blow in your mouth. But after a while they would stop, look at their watches, write something down, lift you onto a stretcher, replace your missing shoe, smooth down your skirt, then cover you with a white sheet and lift you into the ambulance. And you would never see her again. ~ Tabitha Suzuma

I'm a storyteller, I'm not a literary writer, and I don't want to be a literary writer. People say to me, "Oh, when are you going to write something different?" What? I don't want to write anything different. I'm writing relationships between people, all different colors, all different sizes, all different sexual orientations, and that's what I want to do. ~ Jackie Collins

Embarrassingly enough, I often can't remember how I came to write something. ~ Tom Stoppard

Mainly, I'm doing my thing, and I hope people like it. I don't say, 'I'm going to write something radical and hope it reverberates throughout society.' The goal is to write a solid, entertaining, engaging show. ~ Jenji Kohan

I would never write something that made me uncomfortable. I'm not sure it's even possible. ~ Lori Foster

It had been communicated to me through the odd, secret whispers of women that a female's nose must never shine. In war, in famine, in fire, it had to be matte, and no one got a lipstick without the requisite face powder. … I was taunted by the problem: how could someone write something like the 'Symposium' and make sure her nose did not shine at the same time? It didn't matter to me that I was reading a translation. I'd read Plato's brilliant, dense prose and not be able to tear myself away. Even as a reader my nose shined. It was clearly either/or. You had to concentrate on either one or the other. In a New York minute, the oil from Saudi Arabia could infiltrate your house and end up on your nose. It didn't hurt, it didn't make noise, it didn't incapacitate in any way except for the fact that no girl worth her salt took enough time away from vigilance to read a book let alone write one. ~ Andrea Dworkin

But I write badly. The part of my brain in charge of writing ability refuses to work. My memory has weakened, my thoughts lack consistency, and each time I set them down on paper it seems to me that I've lost the intuition of their organic connection, the constructions are monotonous, the phrasing impoverished and timid. I often write something other than what I mean; when I get to the end, I no longer remember the beginning. I often forget ordinary words, and always have to waste much energy avoiding superfluous phrases and unnecessary parenthetical clauses in my writing–both clearly witnessing to a decline of mental activity. And, remarkably, the simpler the writing, the more excruciating is the strain. ~ Anton Chekhov

The most exciting thing I aspire to do is to write something new that I know is going to work, or perform something that I know is going to make people laugh. ~ B.J. Novak

When I set out to write, I want to write something that will rip your heart out. ~ Mat Kearney

It's not hard to write poorly. But to write something good, it has to be revised. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

I found it more pleasurable to write something, sing a melody over it. At a very young age, I kind of honed my writing skills, I guess. ~ DJ Ashba

I find I always have to write something on a steamed mirror. ~ Elaine Dundy

When I try to write I try to write something different every time. That's the challenge. ~ Bob Seger

Don't forget that Mozart worked on commission. He almost always would write something if he knew exactly who was paying for it and where it would be performed. So you can't really separate the creation of genius from the appreciation of it. ~ Eric Weiner

I guess the thing I would say most fervently is that your original impulse to write something is an impulse you should trust, and that if it doesn't work on the first draft, which it hardly ever does, the commitment to revising ought to be something you embrace really early. And to revise and revise and revise. ~ Antonya Nelson

I have this natural thing in my head that when I sit down to write something serious, I tend to make jokes. I can't help it. I can't help but desire for the narrative to be as complicated and as truthful as possible. That's just the way my head works. ~ Justin Simien

Sometimes when one cannot stand the story or novel one
is working on, it helps to write something else - a different
story or novel, or essays venting one's favorite peeves, or exercises
aimed at passing the time and incidentally polishing up
one's craft. The best way in the world for breaking a writer's
block is to write a lot. Jabbering away on paper, one gets
tricked into feeling interested, all at once, in something one is
saying, and behold, the magic waters are flowing again. Often
it helps to work on a journal, since that allows the writer to
write about those things that most interest him, yet frees him
of the pressure of achievement and encourages him to develop
a more natural, more personal style. ~ John Gardner

To say, "Well, I write when I really get into it" is a bunch of bull. Put the paper in the typewriter, stare at it a long time, get snowblindness if you have to, but write something. ~ Erma Bombeck

Sometimes writing is pure hell. I'll write something and look at it in a few hours and say, "This is crap. What will I do with my life? I'll never write again." It's a bipolar business, and you bounce back. You become gripped with some new insight that shows the way. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

When I became more involved in music, I had to give up some of my writing in the literary sense. However, on occasion, I would write something for my own pleasure or I would write notes and introductory remarks in the songbooks I put together. ~ Tom Glazer

Writing is very hard mostly because until you try to write something down, it's easy to fool yourself into believing you understand things. Writing is terrible for vanity and self-delusion. ~ Mark Vonnegut

I know there's bands that might write something that sounds like The Smiths, and they'll go, 'Oh, it sounds like The Smiths, we've got to make it sound not like The Smiths.' ~ Noel Gallagher

Everybody just needs to realize that when you write something you're just in one mood. I was told I needed to write it and it was overdue; I don't even remember what day it was. ~ Bradford Cox

I try to write songs. At our concerts, we take the cream of the crop from my back catalogue and I don't know if I could write something now that would replace any of that. We don't lose any of the standards. We have lots of songs in rotation. ~ Gordon Lightfoot

One thing I ask you to do, you people who have
the pen in your hand, allow God to use you so that you never write
anything that will destroy, that will hurt, but always take the trouble
to write something beautiful, to help the people to see better, to love
better, to come closer ... to each other. ~ Mother Teresa

I think it's more important to write something that brings men back to reading than it is to write for people who already read. There's a reason men don't read, and it's because books don't serve men. It's time we produce books that serve men. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

If I sit down with an electric guitar, what's going to come out are Sabbath/Zeppelin type riffs, but if I'm sitting behind a piano late at night, I might write something like 'Desperado.' You're not going to write 'Desperado' between a wall of Marshalls and thumping, crushing volume. ~ Zakk Wylde

You sit down in the morning on your own to write something. You get to the end of the day and it's not like you've cracked it and it's finished and it's done, because it can always be improved. It can always be changed. There is no right answer, so you can drive yourself crazy with just the expanse of infinite possibilities when it comes to writing. ~ Dan Mazer

I put on a big show when I write something I think is funny. ~ Judd Apatow

I wanted to write something tough, hard, sad, but funny. ~ Jennifer Niven

I'm sort of a pressure writer. If somebody says, "Stan, write something," and I have to have it by tomorrow morning, I'll just sit down and I'll write it. It always seems to come to me. But I'm better doing a rushed job because if it isn't something that's due quickly, I won't work on it until it becomes almost an emergency and then I'll do it. ~ Stan Lee

That was another thing people used to be able to do, which they can't do anymore: enjoy in their heads events which hadn't happened yet and might never occur. My mother was good at that. Someday my father would stop writing science fiction, and write something a whole lot of people wanted to read instead. And we would get a new house in a beautiful city, and nice clothes, and so on. She used to make me wonder why God had ever gone to all the trouble of creating reality.
Quoth Mandarax:
Imagination is as good as many voyages - and how much cheaper!
- GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Whenever I write something, I always want to make sure that what I write is defensible. ~ Salman Rushdie

When you sit down to write something, there should be no guidelines. The main idea is not supposed to be, 'How many different ways can we sell it?' That's so far away from the true spirit of what music is. ~ Prince

I wanted to take my writing to another level. I wanted to write stuff that was personal for real. It's one thing to write a lyric that sounds nice in that line - that's not very tricky - but it's a different thing to write something that sounds nice and actually comes from someplace real. ~ Tove Styrke

I do worry that it's impossible to write something original, that there's nothing that a human hasn't already thought of. But I can put it out of my mind and get on with what I'm doing. ~ Arthur Phillips

SIT DOWN WITH THE plan to write something you have always wanted to write but have never managed to get around to. This time, though, you are not timing yourself. You are sitting down with the determination to write it through, even if it takes all afternoon or night. Relax and ease into it. Promise yourself you'll burn through, put the real stuff down, and not get in your own way. ~ Natalie Goldberg

If you're writing a song, you have to write something that can be understood serially. When you're reading a poem that's written for the page, your eye can skip up and down. You can see the thing whole. But you're not going to see the thing whole in the song. You're going to hear it in series, and you can't skip back. ~ James Fenton

Depression is hard to understand, because it is not a consistent state. Depression is rather like a virus, but like a virus, it has its manageable days and its acute, life-threatening flare-ups. You can be in a depression and still laugh at a friend's joke or have a good night at dinner or manage low-level functioning. You grocery shop and stop to pet a puppy on the corner, talk to friends in a café, maybe write something you don't hate. When this happens, you might examine your day for clues like reading tea leaves in a cup: Was it the egg for breakfast that made the difference? The three-mile run? You think, well, maybe this thing has moved on now. And you make no sudden moves for fear of attracting its abusive attention again.

But other times…

Other times, it's as if a hole is opening inside you, wider and wider, pressing against your lungs, pushing your internal organs into unnatural places, and you cannot draw a true breath. You are breaking inside, slowly, and everything that keeps you tethered to your life, all of your normal responses, is being sucked through the hole like an airlock emptying into space. These are the times Holly Golightly called the Mean Reds.

I call it White Knuckling it. ~ Libba Bray

If you are too overwhelmed, then when you sit down and try to write something, it feels forced. There's nothing worse than forced music. I mean, this world has enough of that right now, where it's basically McDonald's making music. 'Everybody needs another hamburger and fries.' Here's a piece of crap that nobody's gonna care about it two years. ~ Corey Taylor

The problem with books, now that I've written one, is that the idea of adaptation is so much easier than sitting down to write something new. ~ Nick Cave

Every novelist should write something for children at least once in his lifetime. ~ Henryk Sienkiewicz

Don't worry about offending people. Any time you write something thought provoking, some idiots will complain, because they hate it when you make them think. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

Write something that's worth fighting over. Because that's how you change things. That's how you create art. ~ Jeff Goins

I don't think I could have just kept writing the 'Richard Jury' books. It wasn't that I was bored or dissatisfied. I just had to write something else. ~ Martha Grimes

My job is to get people to write something truthful, something about truth and beauty - wherever they are - and to understand how literature is made. And then if they become great writers, that's great, and probably has nothing to do with me. ~ Grace Paley

You can't write things like that to me - bound and gagged in a crate. (Were you serious or was it a joke?) That scares me ... you scare me ... I am completely caught up in your spell, considering a lifestyle with you that I didn't even know existed until last week, and then you write something like that and I want to run screaming into the hills. I won't, of course, because I'd miss you. Really miss you. I want us to work, but I am terrified of the depth of feeling I have for you and the dark path you're leading me down. ~ E.L. James