The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.
Isadora Duncan

It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.
Isadora Duncan

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.
Hermann Hesse

The Twist was a guided missile launched from the ghetto into the heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.
Eldridge Cleaver

I think some of the best modern writing comes now from travellers.
Michael Palin

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response.
Mary Oliver

I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
Mary Oliver

And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.
Sandra Cisneros

One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there.
Stephen Sondheim

When you know your cast well and their strengths and weaknesses, you can start writing for them, just the way Shakespeare wrote for his actors.
Stephen Sondheim

I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.
Stephen Sondheim

I don't think there's much point in bemoaning the state of the world unless there's some way you can think of to improve it. Otherwise, don't bother writing a book; go and find a tropical island and lie in the sun.
Peter Singer

Writing is truly a creative art - putting word to a blank piece of paper and ending up with a full-fledged story rife with character and plot.
William Shatner

Acting is easier - writing is more creative. The lazy man vies with the industrious.
William Shatner

Writing songs is super intimate. It's a bit like getting naked.
Gwen Stefani

The failure of The Cable Guy impacted my career. I had to start writing and acting again.
Ben Stiller

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.
Moliere

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.
Margaret Atwood

Writing is about culture and should be about everything. That's what makes it what it is.
Irvine Welsh

I'm a crap guitarist and I find it really hard writing on my own.
Siobhan Fahey