To write anything tolerable, the mind must be in a natural, proper disposition; provocatives, in that case, as well as in another,will only produce miserable, abortive performances.
God makes trees, he doesn't write books.
Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.
I have wanted to write from a young age, but working with so many gifted authors and editors over the years has taught me so much. I doubt I would be where I am today without that amazing experience.
I don't believe in writer's block or waiting for inspiration. If you're a writer, you sit down and write.
It was actually fun to write [memoir], because I went back to interview people my parents had taught or who had worked with them, and I learned a lot about them that I hadn't known.
Being a songwriter does not rely on an audience or other band members or a camera. I can just sit in a room and write songs.
I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.
For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.
It's much more important to write than to be written about.
My grandfather died in the war, my family went through the war, and it affected my parents in really profound ways. I've always wanted to write about that period - in some ways to digest it for myself, something that defined me but that I didn't go through.
Of course, each of us has to write our own book, live our own life.
Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true,--that shepherds and ministers are both men; their natures and passions the same, the modes of them only different.
You have to be a poet to know how to write a song with lyrics.
I swear I could write a book about all the things no one has ever thanked me for.
I don't know why I write. If I knew the answer, I probably wouldn't have to. But it is a compulsion. You don't choose it, it chooses you. And I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.
I start with something that makes me angry or confused, and then I write about it. It's a form of self-help.
Sometimes you just want to write a party song.
I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.
I envy people who write easily. I enjoy the process, but it's not easeful for me.