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Tom Stoppard Quote: 'I'm not like some other writers: ...'

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If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.


Hugh Prather
Tags: Then Must Write
I don't want to write a novel per year. I know that I need a break of one or two years. So maybe I invent some new, urgent activity so I don't fall into the trap of starting a new novel.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Know Want Some
Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.
Raymond Chandler
Tags: About Just He
I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.
Jack London
Tags: Beauty Me Than
I write everything out in longhand in one fast go. And then I throw out the first few and start over again. By the end of the first draft, the whole thing's messy and disgusting and horrible, but you really understand the foundational stuff.
Lauren Groff
Tags: You Out Really
Writers divide into those who write biting their nails and those who don't. Some writers write licking their finger.
Italo Calvino
Tags: Who Some Those
I'd love to become like Bill Murray, who was so funny on 'Saturday Night Live' and has gone on to do some of the landmark comedies people like. And then to add this whole other phase to his career with 'Lost in Translation' and 'Rushmore.' I always felt to be able to have something similar to that would be great.
Will Ferrell
I've lost track of the number of people who want to be writers but never actually write anything. Talking about writing, dreaming about writing, can be very fun, but it won't get a book written. You've got to write.
Laurell K. Hamilton
Tags: You People About
I liked the idea of having actual magic performed as stage magic, so you could assume that it was just a trick, that something is all smoke and mirrors, but there's that, like, feeling at the back of your mind: What if it's not?
Erin Morgenstern
Tags: You Like Just
It's one thing to sit at home and write a piece with your guitar, and quite another to have it performed by four people. For me, it's always trial and error.
John Scofield
Tags: Home People Me
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I know some writers can write on the road, but I'm not one of them.


George R. R. Martin
Tags: Know Them Some
I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.
David Foster Wallace
Tags: Think Other See
We teach young kids from 8 to 14 or 15 about their musical heritage through great songs written by American songwriters. We don't do too many modern composers, although we include songs from Billy Joel and other writers like him.
Margaret Whiting
Tags: Great Like About
I routinely oscillate between exultation and despair. Maybe at the end of the day I feel pretty good about what I've written, but the next morning I see that it's crap. Then I start again - make a new outline, do some more research, try to rethink the whole question.
Barbara Ehrenreich
For this purpose I determined to keep an account of the voyage, and to write down punctually every thing we performed or saw from day to day, as will hereafter appear.
Christopher Columbus
Tags: Will Thing Every
There are some fine books and essays about that. Lewis Hyde has written about alcoholism and poets and the role that society gives its writers - encouraging them to die.
Sharon Olds
I have been lucky with writers. None have been real trouble. Some I never met. Some I meet only after the book is finished, and some, the easiest to get along with, are the dead ones. Most become friends.
Michael Foreman
Tags: Get Been Never
It was the desire to do the complete thing. I only took taking acting lessons because my whole thing, really, was to direct. But my first jobs were acting jobs.
James Coburn
In my experience, and that of a lot of other women writers, all of the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are to be where they are - about luck and identity and how the idea struck them.
Eleanor Catton
Even the 'Negro' shows like 'Amos and Andy' and 'Beulah' are written largely by white writers - the better to preserve the stereotypes, I imagine.
Langston Hughes
Tags: Like Even Better