Writing Quotes

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.

~ Anna Quindlen

I have no reason to sit home and write songs all day without going out and playing for the folks. And I have no reason to go play for the folks unless I'm writing new songs so they can sort of feed off one another. And I just try to do the best I can.

~ Guy Clark

I'm very shy really. I spend a lot of time in my room alone reading or writing or watching television.

~ Johnny Cash

I've loved singing since forever. Whether it was with my sisters while cleaning the kitchen, putting shows on for my stuffed animals, writing songs about my stuffed animals, starting an a capella group with my cousins while on vacation, or awkwardly singing along to karaoke tracks alone in my bedroom - singing always found a way into my life.

~ Kina Grannis

I'm the most communal person that exists and a very solitary person. So I think writing is a form of getting to the community and being alone, and it's the best of both possible worlds.

~ Ariel Dorfman

Early on, if I was alone two three nights in a row, I'd start writing poems about suicide.

~ Jack Nicholson

Good acting is all in the writing. If it isn't on the page, then it really won't make any difference. You cannot act on force of personality alone.

~ Larry Hagman

Night-time is when I brainstorm; last thing, when the family's asleep and I'm alone, I think about the next day's writing and plan a strategy for my assault on the blank page.

~ Athol Fugard

Writing music and lyrics, you tend to become a control freak - sitting alone in your room with a bare light bulb over your head, writing communist manifestos.

~ Jason Robert Brown

When I first started writing, it was me alone with a computer in my apartment. I hated the time away from other people, and my writing sucked. Now I have a laptop; I can do the most tedious part of my job in a public place.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

We live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups. I ask, in my writing, 'What is real?' Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms.

~ Philip K. Dick

However, please allow me to say that the fundamental style of my writing has been to start from my personal matters and then to link it up with society, the state and the world.

~ Kenzaburō Ōe

The real violence is committed in the writing of history, the records of the legal system, the reporting of news, through the manipulation of social contracts, and the control of information.

~ Bryant H. Mcgill

My favourite authors are John Grisham and Jeffrey Archer. Grisham rapidly established himself and now completely owns the legal space of fiction writing, something I want to do in financial space. I like Archer because he keeps his readers engaged: every chapter is a page turner, and he keeps his writing simple.

~ Ravi Subramanian

I wrote small stories here and there, then bigger ones. Some were even written for money. I signed up for a writing class and snuck my first assignment on a yellow legal pad in a partner's office while he read through my memo.

~ Rachel Sklar

I chose law because writing was involved. I didn't realize how boring legal writing was, but I even learned to love that.

~ Marcia Clark

I'm always writing something. There's always some structure sitting around someplace. There's always things on the computer, things scratched on score paper, legal tablets full of lyrics. It's never not buzzing around me all the time. I'm always doing it.

~ J. D. Souther

People have always heard voices. Sometimes they're called shamans, sometimes they're called mad, and sometimes they're called fiction writers. I always feel lucky that I live in a culture where fiction writing is legal and not seen as pathology.

~ Ruth Ozeki

What I'm doing is writing stories about women who care about justice. They are women who think about the difference between right and wrong, what's legal and illegal, ethical and unethical, moral and immoral.

~ Lisa Scottoline

Truly I never thought of myself as writing legal thrillers, and I still don't think I do. I write stories about women.

~ Lisa Scottoline

I have always been delighted when told there was a piece of fanfic inspired by a book of mine floating about. I don't read it for legal reasons, but I'm thrilled to know it's there. Someone cared. Someone loved it enough to spend their free time writing about it for free.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

People read legal writing differently. When you're at the crux of a legal argument, every step is a step in the argument. The judge will see any holes. If you do that in fiction, it's too long and boring.

~ William Lashner

I was in a fertility situation publicly, so I disappeared. I was very satisfied just being to able to creatively express myself with writing. The white hot publicity that came from 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' was appreciated but not sought, so I was happy to walk away from it and then write.

~ Nia Vardalos

I tried writing this book about a singer in a wedding band, but realized I only wanted to write the book so I could have an excuse to sing with a wedding band as research. That's not a good enough reason to write a book.

~ Megan Mccafferty

In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.

~ Langston Hughes

I used to be a freelance journalist, so I had to write fast, but I always found writing nonfiction constraining. I like the freedom of fiction, where I get to invent everything, and tidy, conclusive endings are within my control.

~ Michelle Gagnon

My only writing ritual is to shave my head bald between writing the first and second drafts of a book. If I can throw away all my hair, then I have the freedom to trash any part of the book on the next rewrite.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

I remember my dad working with me on breaking down my script and writing out a back story for my character and all that stuff.

~ Jason Bateman

When I started writing, I did have some idealised notion of my dad as a writer. But I have less and less of a literary rivalry with him as I've gone on. I certainly don't feel I need his approval, although maybe that's because I'm confident that I've got it.

~ Paul Theroux

I have four shelves covered with journals that I've written. Dad and I are writing songs together. I've probably written 100 songs.

~ Miley Cyrus