Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. — E. L. Doctorow
I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind. — Patrick Dennis
The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen. — Lee Iacocca
The best tip for writing is just to write; to sit down and write, to begin doing it and not to be scared by the blank page. — David Almond
Producing writing is not so much like filling a basin or pool once, but rather getting water to keep flowing through till finally it runs clear. — Peter Elbow
When you write ,it's like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring then unity. — Edwidge Danticat
Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat. — Dorothy Parker
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. — Gene Fowler
You may choose to write. your top-level goal in indelible ink, but until you know for sure, work in pencil. — Angela Duckworth
To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I start to think, and then I sink
Into the paper like I was ink
When I'm writing, I'm trapped in between the lines
I escape when I finish the rhyme. — Rakim
The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible. — Vladimir Nabokov
That's the horrible thing starting out, you get distracted a lot because anything is easier than writing. It's just the same enemy - blank paper. — Jimmy Breslin
If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write. — Martin Luther
the best way to get something done is to begin. — Unknown
Writing is easy. Just sit in front of a typewriter, open up a vein and bleed it out drop by drop. — Red Smith
writing is a labor of love and also an act of defiance, a way to light a candle in a gale wind. — Alice Childress
Write something, even if it's just a suicide note. — Gore Vidal
The beginning is the most important part of the work. — Plato
Top 10 Starting To Write Quotes
You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion. — L. Ron Hubbard
I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction. — Judith Krantz
Sure, I have advice for people starting to write. Don't. I don't need the competition. — Robert B. Parker
I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14 - to meet women. — Billy Joel
you don't have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great. — Les Brown
It's tough to start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading and re-living the last one. Grab the pen of life and start writing the next one. — Patrick Bet-David
I can't help but to write, I have a inner need for it. If I'm not in the middle of some literary project, I'm utterly lost, unhappy and distressed. As soon as I get started, I calm down. — Kaari Utrio
The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. — William Faulkner
I did not have a chance to write novels until my youngest child started school fulltime — Anne Mccaffrey
The human mind is a wonderful thing, it starts working from before you're born and doesn't stop till you sit down to write a song. — Roger Miller
Starting To Write Image Quotes
You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
Starting To Write Quotes
Mr. Hitler was big on me. He kept writing and inviting me to come to Germany, and if the war hadn't started when it did, I would have gone and I would have taken a gun out of my purse and shot him, because I am the only person who would not have been searched. — Sayings
If you're going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow. — Louis L'Amour
Composing is a natural fit. As far as the creative process goes, I'd rather do this than anything else, by far. Something different happened to me when I started to write music to images. It was a feeling of excitement and connection and a sense of being in the right place that I never had before. — James Newton Howard
For what it's worth: it's never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you're proud of, and, if you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start over.
I am often asked why I started to write poetry. The answer is that my motivation sprang from a visceral need to creatively articulate the experiences of the black youth of my generation, coming of age in a racist society. — Linton Kwesi Johnson
If you haven't got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you'll only have to throw away the first three pages. — William Campbell Gault
If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. Write. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less. — Anne Rice
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your own.
I went to the trash pile at Tuskegee Institute and started my laboratory with bottles, old fruit jars and any other thing I found I could use. ... [The early efforts were] worked out almost wholly on top of my flat topped writing desk and with teacups, glasses, bottles and reagents I made myself. — George Washington Carver
But just as they did in Philadelphia when they were writing the constitution, sooner or later, you've got to compromise. You've got to start making the compromises that arrive at a consensus and move the country forward. — Colin Powell
I never had any lessons. When I first started playing I used to read music. I was very interested in music. But when I started playing in groups I did a silly thing and dropped it. It's great if you can write things down. — John Bonham
What's that line from TS Eliot? To arrive at the place where you started, but to know it for the first time. I'm able to write about a breakup from a different place. Same brokenness. Same rock-bottom. But a little more informed, now I'm older. Thank God for growing up. — Alanis Morissette
Childhood is not a race to see how quickly a child can read, write and count. It is a small window of time to learn and develop at the pace that is right for each individual child. Earlier is not better. — Magda Gerber
I decided to write the book to open the eyes of the people of how corrupt John D. Rockefeller company was and the unfair ways he used to be successful. I wanted the people to know the truth about the Standard Oil Company. — Ida Tarbell
When you start seeing your worth, you'll find it harder to stay around people who don't.
I think segregation is bad, I think it's wrong, it's immoral. I'd fight against it with every breath in my body, but you don't need to sit next to a white person to learn how to read and write. The NAACP needs to say that. — Clarence Thomas
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation. — Graham Greene
Talking of Pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand, and with the other holding to my Mouth a Nectarine - how good how fine. It went down all pulpy, slushy, oozy, all its delicious embonpoint melted down my throat like a large, beatified Strawberry. — John Keats
Be willing to walk alone. Many who started with you won't finish with you.
You remember how you were taught to write. Your mother put a pencil in your hand, took your hand in hers, and began to move it. Since you did not know at all what she meant to do, you left your hand completely free in hers. This is like the power of God in our lives. — Anthony of Sourozh
And I've always loved commercials. I like working out how to organically weave a brand's message into the writing process. It's like an improv show, where comics ask the audience to throw out a word and a skit is built around it. — Jason Bateman
I probably spent more time listening to albums than writing songs. But I think that gave me all the tricks in terms of wordplay, from how I pronounced my words to the actual delivery. — Kendrick Lamar
I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven. — Jascha Heifetz
How To Write Quotes
I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don't know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying - please let me live until I am finished. — Haruki Murakami
I don’t write to make investing easy. I write to show how hard it is so that people won’t try tricks that they can’t do. — Howard Marks
You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be. — Mario Vargas Llosa
Maturity is when you stop complaining and making excuses, and start making changes.
Happy songs are very difficult to write. How many truly great upbeat songs are there? — Sayings
I can only speak for myself. But what I write and how I write is done in order to save my own life. And I mean that literally. For me literature is a way of knowing that I am not hallucinating, that whatever I feel/know is. — Barbara Christian
Write. Write every day. Write honestly. Write something that doesn’t exist, and you wish did. Read. Learn. Study. Watch people. Listen to what they say, listen to how they say it and listen to what they do not say. Surprise yourself. Scare yourself. — Brian Michael Bendis
Stop being afraid of what could go wrong, and start being excited of what could go right.
Good education means learning to read, write and most importantly learn how to learn so that you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up. — Patty Murray
Writing a first draft is like groping one's way into a dark room, or overhearing a faint conversation, or telling a joke whose punchline you've forgotten. As someone said, one writes mainly to rewrite, for rewriting and revising are how one's mind comes to inhabit the material fully. — Ted Solotaroff
I can’t remember how many times I advised students to stop writing the sunny hours and write from where it hurts: No one wants to read polite. It puts them to sleep. — Anne Bernays
For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence. — Wallace Shawn
When You Start Quotes
Don't follow the path. Go where there is no path and begin the trail. When you start a new trail equipped with courage, strength and conviction, the only thing that can stop you is you! — Ruby Bridges
Your mind is a powerful thing. When you filter it with positive thoughts, your life will start to change. — Buddha
When you start suppressing feelings at an early age, it hurts you down the road. Full expression of anger and pain is very important. Interview with Andrew Shue — Andrew Shue
When you give up remember why you started.
Faith is not something you have to get. It's something that you, as a bornagain child of God, already have. Act on it by releasing it to God. That's when your healing starts! — Oral Roberts
Wisdom and peace come when you start living the life the creator intended for you. — Geronimo
Allow yourself to be a beginner. No one starts off being excellent.
When the winds of life don't hit your sails, you grab the oars of life and you start pushing. — Greg Plitt
When someone hurts you, your first thought may be to wish you had never met them at all. But remember that even those who've hurt you, came into your life for a reason, and left for a reason. It’s for the best and healing starts with acceptance. — Yasmin Mogahed
Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins. — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him... The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut. — Will Rogers
Learning How To Write Quotes
Isn't one of your first exercises in learning how to communicate to write a description of how to tie your shoelaces? The point being that it's basically impossible to use text to show that — Donald A. Norman
A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God. — Sidney Sheldon
Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right. — Marian Wright Edelman
We must learn, and we are gradually learning, how to write history with the help of archaeology. — Michael Rostovtzeff
It is no longer enough to simply read and write. Students must also become literate in the understanding of visual images. Our children must learn how to spot a stereotype, isolate a social cliche, and distinguish facts from propaganda, analysis from banter and important news from coverage. — Ernest L. Boyer
If a man means his writing seriously, he must mean to write well. But how can he write well until he learns to see what he has written badly. His progress toward good writing and his recognition of bad writing are bound to unfold at something like the same rate. — John Ciardi
Children need far more than basic skills in reading, writing, and math, as important as those might be. Children also need to learn how to think for themselves, how to find meaning in what they learn, and how to work and live together. — Marshall B. Rosenberg
I'm trying to get in the habit of, you know, picking up a book and learning how to write my feelings down, not my feelings but my thoughts, about things, and hopefully I'll moving toward the writing and directing thing soon. — Corey Haim
Take some wood and canvas and nails and things. Build yourself a theater, a stage, light it, learn about it. When you've done that you will probably know how to write a play. — Eugene O'Neill
It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way. — Ernest Hemingway
Being A Writer Quotes
I'm not a lyric writer to make statements. What I enjoy doing is making paintings with lyrics, creating colorful images. I think that's more what entertainment and music should be. — Chris Cornell
I am dumbfounded that there hasn't been a crackdown with the libel and slander laws on some of these would-be writers and reporters on the Internet. — Walter Cronkite
I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork. — Peter De Vries
You may not be good at hand-to-hand sales, but you may be a really good writer. — Naval Ravikant
The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing. Isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination, consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing, and soul-crushing inadequacy. And that’s on a good day. — Robert De Niro
Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, a good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-dressed, well-groomed, and unaggressive. — Marya Mannes
Do you want to be an artist and a writer, or a wife and a lover? With kids, your focus changes. I don't want to go to PTA meetings. — Stevie Nicks
When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shoddy by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better. — F. Scott Fitzgerald
Virginia Woolf said that writers must be androgynous. I'll go a step further. You must be bisexual. — Rita Mae Brown
It's funny, in a way the actor is a writer. It's not like the two things are so separate as to be like apples and oranges. The writer and the actor are one. — Sam Shepard
Writing A Book Quotes
I like writing books. I'd rather be at home with my wife. I can write, take a break, come out, have a glass of tea, give my wife a kiss, and go back in and write some more. It's not so bad. I am really lucky. — Gene Wilder
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end. — Michel Foucault
If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. — Toni Morrison
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's books and write your own. — Albert Einstein
It's always hard to wrap up a series. The longer I spend with the characters, the more they become like friends. — Rick Riordan
In Great Britain, an author published a book in which he claimed that Jesus Christ had children. Such statements don't trigger civil unrest and bloodshed in Europe. But write similar statements about Islam in Syria and you might see bloody uprisings. — Bashar al-Assad
What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature! — Charles Darwin
There are a couple of carp fishing books I've been reading. I'm very interested in that line of books, because I think they write very well, carp anglers, about the general environment. — Tom Felton
I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise. — Richard Brautigan
Writing Words Quotes
Music expresses that which cannot be put into words. — Victor Hugo
Words are the most powerful thing in the universe... Words are containers. They contain faith, or fear, and they produce after their kind. — Charles Capps
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. — James A. Michener
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. — Aldous Huxley
Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... anything goes. — Cole Porter
I write from my knowledge not my lack, from my strength not my weakness. I am not interested if anyone knows whether or not I am familiar with big words, I am interested in trying to render big ideas in a simple way. I am interested in being understood not admired. — Lucille Clifton
One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. — Jack Kerouac
When you write a song, most of the words you use are in black and white, and then, from time to time, you use one that’s in color. These words in color are a part of ourselves, because we give them a meaning. If you like, we give them a third dimension. — Jacques Brel
I can’t write five words but that I change seven. — Dorothy Parker
You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length. — Carl Friedrich Gauss
Teaching Writing Quotes
Between rounds of speed chess I read enough of a programming manual to teach myself to write programs on the school's DEC mainframe in the language Basic. — Eric Allin Cornell
I have devoted my energies to the study of the scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church; study, teaching, and writing have always been my delight. — Venerable Bede
It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words. — Anthony Doerr
James Franco, acting, teaching, directing, writing, producing, photography, soundtracks, editing - is there anything you can do? — Natasha Leggero
Teach your students real-world writing purposes, add a teacher who models his or her struggles with the writing process, throw in lots of real-world mentor texts for students to emulate, and give our kids the time necessary to enable them to stretch as writers. — Kelly Gallagher
It's very hard to teach someone how to write a song if to begin with there's no creative crop to harvest. — Barry Mann
Children do not learn in school; they are babysat. It takes maybe 50 hours to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. After that, students can teach themselves. Mainly what school does is to keep the children off the streets and out of the job market. — John Taylor Gatto
If you are not a writer, you will not understand the difficulties of writing. If you are not a writer, you will not know the fears and hopes of the writers you teach. — Mem Fox
I myself have read the writings and teachings of the heretics, polluting my soul for a while with their abominable notions, though deriving this benefit: I was able to refute them for myself and loathe them even more. — Eusebius
Writing Life Quotes
We need to have music that contributes to the well-being of the spirit. Music that cradles people's lives and makes things a little easier. That's what I try to do, and what I want to do. You don't want to close the door on hope. — Merle Haggard
You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing. — Richard P. Feynman
Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it. — Matsuo Basho
I write ... in order to help ensure that the teeming millions in the New World, for whose sins Christ gave His life, do not continue to die in ignorance, but rather are brought to knowledge of God and thereby saved. — Bartolome de las Casas
I am the author of my life. Unfortunately, I am writing in pen and can’t erase my mistakes. — Bill Kaulitz
To gain your own voice you have to forget about having it heard. — Allen Ginsberg
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become. — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
I think that every decision I make in my life is based off of an emotion - and it definitely hurts me in some situations, and helps in some situations, like obviously writing and stuff is my favourite thing to do because I get to use all of my emotions and express them in that way. — Melanie Martinez
She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste. — Julio Cortazar
You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life. — Jiddu Krishnamurti
When I'm writing [songs], some days the pen just goes. I'm not in charge and I'm almost listening outside of it. That's when I realize that we all have to start looking at life as a gift. It's like listening to a color and believing that these colors have soul mates and once you get them all together the painting is complete. — Prince
I worked on 'Blue Peter' and 'Tonight' and lots of TV plays, filmed people like Rudolf Nureyev and Ted Heath, and ended up a senior cameraman with my own crew. I'd had my first short story published in 1947, and when my writing really started to take off I decided to go freelance, and eventually left the BBC in 1965. — Michael Bond
I hadn't played any music since freshman year of college, more than thirty years ago, so I had to relearn everything. I started writing songs. Some were dance and trance songs (I listen to them a lot while I'm writing), and some were love songs, because that after all is what music is about - dancing and trancing and love and love's setbacks. — Nicholson Baker
It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old water-proof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write. — Ernest Hemingway
When I first started writing plays I couldn't write good dialogue because I didn't respect how black people talked. I thought that in order to make art out of their dialogue I had to change it, make it into something different. Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I let them start talking. — August Wilson
I'm really glad that I'm not Anna because I don't want to be there again. I've been there. But when something does happen to me, whether it's that movie or whether it's actually happened to me, I feel that it's my duty to actually share that with all of you guys. I want to immediately go to my desk and start writing about it. — Stevie Nicks
When I started writing a business column 15 years ago, I knew I'd found the perfect job for myself. As a columnist I could pick my own topic, do my own analysis, say what I wanted to say and attribute it to myself. Best of all, I could write in my own voice. — Allan Sloan
Only a fool wants war, but once a war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. It cannot even be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy, and it is that savage joy that inspires our bards to write their greatest songs about love and war. — Bernard Cornwell
I started writing because there's an absence of things I was familiar with or that I dreamed about. One of my senses of anger is related to this vacancy - a yearning I had as a teenager. . .and when I get ready to write, I think I'm trying to fill that. . . — Ntozake Shange
One good way to start writing poetry is to read all kinds of poetry: not just in order to imitate but to fill up your head with it, to absorb it, to make poetry an essential part of how you view the world. — Valerie Worth
Actually, I never tell for whom my songs are written. It's a kind of superstition! I started writing songs for not having the courage to say certain things in people's faces and started to put these feelings on paper... Over the years, became a mania and then I never talk about for whom they are made. — Enrique Iglesias
I had lots of time to read [being a lawyer] what I hadn't read in my school and college days. Being a bad student I barely passed my exams and I barely bothered about books. It was sports all the time. I started reading and got involved in literature and writing. The few cases I handled gave me the material for my early short stories. — Khushwant Singh
When you finally start to write something, do not let yourself stop...even when you are convinced it's the worst garbage ever. This is the biggest caveat for beginning writers. Instead, force yourself to finish what you began, and THEN go back and edit it. — Jodi Picoult
I would challenge anybody in their darkest moment to write what they're grateful for, even stupid little things like the green grass that made them feel good, the friendly conversation they had with somebody on an alevator. You start to realize how rich you are. — Jim Carrey
I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last. Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about. — John Legend
I started writing and photographing for different publications and finally ended up being the correspondent in South Asia, for the Geneva-based Journal de Geneve, which at one time used to be one of the best international newspapers in Europe. — Francois Gautier
I think every band is a little cautious when the drummer starts to write tunes. — Matt Cameron
I thought I would write something that would make some people uncomfortable. . . . What intrigued me, I think, was the idea of women of my own generation who were successful, intelligent, coming to power and suddenly in the public arena. I started to think about what they are allowed and what they are not allowed. — Wendy Wasserstein
In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays. — Jose Saramago
As I tell my intro creative writing students, after reading someone you love, wait at least an hour before starting to write. — Matthew Healy
One never knows enough about characters in real life to put them into novels. One gets started and then, suddenly, one can not remember what toothpaste they use; what are their views on interior decoration, and one is stuck utterly. No, major characters emerge; minor ones may be photographed. — Graham Greene
I've heard writers talk about "discovering a voice," but for me that wasn't a problem. There were so many voices that I didn't know where to start. — Sam Shepard
My influence is probably more from American crime writers than any Europeans. And I hardly read any Scandinavian crime before I started writing myself. I wasn't a great crime reader to begin with. — Jo Nesbo
I write about African women, that's really my topic. I have no shame or qualm in it because it's a very underrepresented topic, which is part of the reason I started to write. — Danai Gurira
In Conclusion
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