It is impossible to distrust one's writing without awakening a deeper distrust in oneself. - Nicole Krauss Every body at all addicted to letter writing, without having much to say, which will include a large proportion of the female world at least... - Jane Austen For some reason, the concept of writing with swing chords was intimidating. - Suzy Bogguss ...if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don't even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is-- excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. - Ray Bradbury Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacio...

You know you're writing well when you're throwing good stuff into the wastebasket. - Ernest Hemingway Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well. - Andre Breton I think it's a short story writer's duty, as well as writing well about emotions and characters, to write story. - Eric Brown ...[T]he only means I have to stop ignorant snobs from behaving towards genre fiction with snobbish ignorance is to not reinforce their ignorance and snobbery by lying and saying that when I write SF it isn't SF, but to tell them more or less patiently for forty or fifty years that they are wrong to exclude SF and fantasy from literature, and proving my arguments by writing well. - Ursula K Le Guin Muses are fickle, and many a writer, peering into the voice, has escaped paralysis by ascribing the creative responsibility to a talisman: a lucky charm, a brand of paper, but most often a writing instrument. Am I writing well? Thank my pe...

Idol has pretty much taken me out of my recording and out of my choreography. I have managed to slip in some choreography jobs. And I've been writing songs for other artists. - Paula Abdul Heartbreak can definitely give you a deeper sensibility for writing songs. I drew on a lot of heartbreak when I was writing my first album, I didn't mean to but I just did. - Adele I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. That's what I do. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it. - Van Morrison Sometimes you're trapped in writing songs and you don't have enough distance from what you do anymore and you need the talent and the years of other people to come and jump in. - Keren Ann When I was young, I just sat down and started playing Chopsticks at the piano. I got so far and then lost interest. Eventually, I regained it and started writing songs. - Otis Blackwell We had offers to go everywhere and we could have done them. ...

The journalism school helped me develop writing skills, and I had been enjoying cartooning from a very young age. My interest in puppetry, however, came much later. - William Jackson A writer who has perfect writing skills and zero honesty is not an author but a sales person. - Sandra Chami Kassis I speak Mandarin and can read and write a little. I took a few classes at Harvard to get better in my reading and writing skills. - Jeremy Lin I actually credit Twitter with fine-tuning some joke-writing skills. I still feel like I'm working at it. - Steve Martin

The writing process for me is pretty much always the same - it's a solitary experience. - Sheryl Crow If we were truly in the studio making a record, it would have been more time consuming, and certainly I would have been more involved in the writing process. - Taylor Dayne The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I'm just like, 'Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do'. - Eminem Since signing with Universal, I have been working closely with Gary Ross, the director, producer and screenwriter. We have spent many hours on the phone, and I've been sending him information and items that have been useful to the writing process. - Laura Hillenbrand When the stories come easily and the writing process doesn't feel laboring, that's usually a good sign f...

So apart from writing letters home to your fantasy girlfriends,"Ben says, walking backwards, "what do you guys do out here without television and phones?" "Men's business. Bit confidential," Griggs says patronisingly. "Wow, wish I were you," Ben says, shaking his head with mock regret. "All I'll be doing tonight is hanging out in Taylor's bedroom, lying on her bed, sharing my earphones with her, hoping she won't hog all the room because it's such a tiny space. - Melina Marchetta It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life. - Haruki Murakami Generally, people who are good at writing letters have no need to write letters. They've got plenty of life to lead inside their own context. - Haruki Murakami I wrote a huge number of letters that spring: one a week to Naoko, several to Reiko, and several more to Midori. I wrote letters in the lecture hall, I wrote letters at my desk at home ...

I'm talking to you and it's basically a direct communication, whereas if I'm writing a letter to you and you read the letter, there are like 12 extra deconstruction and reconstruction steps in the communication. - Kevin J Anderson Does it help?" he asks. "The e-mailing." She nods. "A tiny bit. It's strange. You're writing a letter to someone who's never going to read it, so it kind of frees you up a bit. - Melina Marchetta The creative act is like writing a letter. A letter is a project; you don't sit down to write a letter unless you know what you want to say and to whom you want to say it. - Lukas Foss I spent hours putting that cassette together. To me, making a tape is like writing a letter - there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again, and I wanted it to be a good one... A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention, and then you've ...

Every body at all addicted to letter writing, without having much to say, which will include a large proportion of the female world at least... - Jane Austen Letter writing is the only device combining solitude with good company. - George Byron Letter writing is a habit that allows us to explore new trails all our lives. Each day is a fresh new adventure when we regularly send and receive letters. - Alexandra Stoddard Letter writing allows us to be alone yet connected. We need a certain amount of solitude in order to have true ideas to communicate. But few of us desire solitude all the time.... Yet solitude is what makes us contemplative and receptive, more aware of life's gifts and our own special blessings. - Alexandra Stoddard

I read less of everything now. With only fond memories of others' work, it will be interesting to give my own journal writing a try now. - Jonathan Carroll I write journals and would recommend journal writing to anyone who wishes to pursue a writing career. You learn a lot. You also remember a lot... and memory is important. - Judy Collins Only the broken heart has the ghost of a chance to grieve, to forgive, to long, to transform. Christina Baldwin, author of Life's Companion, Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice, 1990. Used with author's permission - Judith Victoria Douglas Must look into the botanical background of substance known as hashish, I jotted in my journal, writing by the light of candles that grew incessantly jewel-like even as protean wafts of incense approached my snout like platters of ripe fruits borne on the back of Nubian pages. - Tom Robbins I was an angst-y journal writing kid. - Justin Halpern My friend is composing an epic in Byronic stanzas ...

If you read the first page of one of my novels, I can guarantee that you will read the last one. This isn't just social commentary. This is also about writing good page-turners. I want people to keep reading. - Jodi Picoult I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing. - Lloyd Alexander The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it. - Ernest Hemingway Before I published any of my own stories, I read a great many stories by people as passionate about writing as I was, and I learned something from everyone I read -- something most important what I should not try to write. - Dorothy Allison What's so great about writing?" "You can make anything true - Adi Alsaid I'm passionate again about writing. This is important to me; it's got to be the comeback book. - Jeffrey Archer Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one els...