I was always writing, since I was, like, 12.
A Boogie wit da Hoodien
When I was 13, before I got in high school, I was writing mad raps. I didn't really know if it was good or not, so for a year, I just held them. When I got in high school, I started spittin' bars.
Texting isn't writing. It's not like letter writing. Texting is short scriptwriting. It's a collaborative soap opera where nothing happens.
A. A. Gill
Because there is no better tool for writing than experience. It has very little to do with grammar and everything to do with knowing.
Writing, for me, is the great organiser. It's while writing that I think most deeply about things.
I gave up writing children's books. I wanted to escape from them as I had once wanted to escape from 'Punch': as I have always wanted to escape. In vain.
A. A. Milne
The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.
A. B. Yehoshua
I had casually rented an apartment that cost $75 a month because I expected my writing to pay my way.
A. E. van Vogt
If the first requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite, the second is to put in your apprenticeship as a feeder when you have enough money to pay the check but not enough to produce indifference of the total.
A. J. Liebling
The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down.
If you imagine writing 1,000 words a day, which most journalists do, that would be a very long book a year. I don't manage nearly that... but I have published slightly too much recently.
A. N. Wilson
Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theater. You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when I do Western films, the need for originality is greater. Then I become very conscious about the writing.
A. R. Rahman
I don't understand why, in my work, writing is always so dangerous. It's very destructive. People who write books are destroyers.
A. S. Byatt
I have never been able to read Agatha Christie - the pleasure is purely in the puzzle, and the reader is toyed with by someone who didn't decide herself who the killer was until the end of the writing.
I like to write about painting because I think visually. I see my writing as blocks of color before it forms itself. I think I also care about painting because I'm not musical. Painting to me is not a metaphor for writing, but something people do that can never be reduced to words.
The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.
It's a terrible poison, writing.
I did a lot of my writing as though I was an academic, doing some piece of research as perfectly as possible.
I think for me to be involved in a festival, there has to be a strong element of songwriting and musicianship.
Aaron Dessner
Our writing, especially during 'Boxer' - the recording process was the writing process, which is not the way I would advise anyone else to do it.
We have a writing process that's very much you try to create the character in a complicated way and then you let the story lead you to discovering who the character is in a natural way.
In high school, my English teacher Celeste McMenamin introduced me to the great novels and Shakespeare and taught me how to write. Essays, poetry, critical analysis. Writing is a skill that was painful then but a love of mine now.
'Yellow Moon' was a poem. My wife at the time, Joel - she's dead now - it was our 25th anniversary. She had the chance to go on a cruise with her sister. And I'm home with the kids and looking up, and I saw the big moon, and I just started writing.
Tell your idea to whomever will listen, and you'll get valuable market feedback before writing a single line of code.
I'm more comfortable writing traditional protagonists. But 'Steve Jobs' and 'The Social Network' have antiheroes. I like to write antiheroes as if they're making their case to God about why they should be allowed into heaven. I have to find something in that character that is like me and write to that.
I love writing but hate starting. The page is awfully white, and it says, 'You may have fooled some of the people some of the time, but those days are over, giftless. I'm not your agent, and I'm not your mommy; I'm a white piece of paper. You wanna dance with me?' and I really, really don't. I'll go peaceable-like.
I'm very physical. When I'm writing, I'm playing all the parts; I'm saying the lines out loud, and if I get excited about something - which doesn't happen very often when I'm writing, but it's the greatest feeling when it does - I'll be out of the chair and walking around, and if I'm at home, I'll find myself two blocks from my house.
The rules are all in a sixty-four-page pamphlet by Aristotle called 'Poetics.' It was written almost three thousand years ago, but I promise you, if something is wrong with what you're writing, you've probably broken one of Aristotle's rules.
When I create a TV show, it's so that I can write it. I'm not an empire builder; my writing staff is usually a combination of two kinds of people - experts in the world the show is set in, and young writers who will not be unhappy if they're not writing scripts.
Writing never comes easy. The difference between Page 2 and Page Nothing is the difference between life and death.
When I wrote 'The West Wing,' the juice behind it was that in popular culture, our leaders in government are generally portrayed as Machiavellian, or as idiots. I thought, well, how about writing about a group of hyper-competent people?
I've got plenty of quirks. I go to an office early in the morning. Early in the morning is really good writing time. I take anywhere between six to eight showers a day. I'm not exaggerating. I'm not a germaphobe: it's all about a fresh start.
I've never written anything that I haven't wanted to write again. I want to, and still am, writing 'A Few Good Men' again. I didn't know what I was doing then, and I'm still trying to get it right. I would write 'The Social Network' again if they would let me, I'd write 'Moneyball' again. I would write 'The West Wing' again.
I grew up in the theatre. It's where I got my start. Writing a television drama with theatrical dialogue about the theatre is beyond perfection.
Well, I must tell you I write the scripts very close to the bone. So I'm writing episode seven now and couldn't tell you what happens in episode eight.
I am truly at my happiest not when I am writing an aria for an actor or making a grand political or social point. I am at my happiest when I've figured out a fun way for somebody to slip on a banana peel.
If I am writing a movie and I am stuck, I can call the studio and tell them it's delayed. You can't do that with television - you have air dates to meet.
I like writing idealistically, romantically and swashbucklingly.
Everything can be going well, but if I'm not writing, I'm not happy. When I'm writing well, I'm like a different person.
Writing an encyclopedia is hard. To do anywhere near a decent job, you have to know a great deal of information about an incredibly wide variety of subjects. Writing so much text is difficult, but doing all the background research seems impossible.
One thing I always did in my career was writing. I always was writing. I was trying to create things. For myself, for other people.
The pleasure from acting comes from having great writing to work with. If it's well written and the character is interesting, then, as an actor, that's the raw material I need.
Usually when I write a script, I have in mind some real people that I'm writing about, who don't always act in the film afterward.
I love Maira Kalman. She's an amazing illustrator and writer. I've loved her since I was in college, but when I moved to New York and experienced the same city she was drawing and writing about, I developed a whole new appreciation. Her work made me observe everything so much deeper and more joyfully.
I'm always writing lyrics. I have so many lyrics on so many stray pieces of paper. Everywhere.
I got into DJing and making beats when I was about 17. I was always fascinated by the four elements of hip-hop: you know, writing, rhyming, breakdancing and graffiti.
There are some different things I'm writing and developing, but I don't know where they'll go. They're fun stuff that I would be in and are written in my voice, for me.
The Arab World is writing a new future; the pen is in our own hands.
Half your battle is won when the writing is good, and then you as an artist bring your personality into it.