#writing

I wanted to play piano, and that slid quickly into writing - it wasn't enough to play other people's notes: I had to write notes too. ↗

— Luc Ferrari

#had #i #into #notes #other

I should add that it is open to debate whether what we call the writing of history these days is truly scientific. ↗

— Lion Feuchtwanger

#call #days #debate #history #i

Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater latitude for the ego. ↗

— John Cheever

#excellent #good #greater #hundred #latitude

In writing, I search for believability, simplicity and emotional impact. ↗

— Hal David

#i #impact #search #simplicity #writing

My conception of a novel is that it ought to be a personal struggle, a direct and total engagement with the author's story of his or her own life. This conception, again, I take from Kafka, who, although he was never transformed into an insect, and although he never had a piece of food (an apple from his family's table!) lodged in his flesh and rotting there, devoted his whole life as a writer to describing his personal struggle with his family, with women, with moral law, with his Jewish heritage, with his Unconscious, with his sense of guilt, and with the modern world. Kafka's work, which grows out of the nighttime dreamworld in Kafka's brain, is *more* autobiographical than any realistic retelling of his daytime experiences at the office or with his family or with a prostitute could have been. What is fiction, after all, if not a kind of purposeful dreaming? The writer works to create a dream that is vivid and has meaning, so that the reader can then vividly dream it and experience meaning. And work like Kafka's, which seems to proceed directly from dream, is therefore an exceptionally pure form of autobiography. There's an important paradox here that I would like to stress: the greater the autobiographical content of a fiction writer's work, the *smaller* its superficial resemblance to the writer's actual life. The deeper the writer digs for meaning, the more the random particulars of the writer's life become *impediments* to deliberate dreaming. ↗

— Jonathan Franzen

#kafka #novel #writing #dreams

When we've finished the current tour I'm going to go back to Italy and see if I can do some more writing. ↗

— Gerry Mulligan

#current #finished #go #going #i

Not only are Christians writing about Jesus, but also Communists, Jews, atheists and agnostics are taking up their pens to paint a portrait of Jesus. ↗

— John Clayton

#agnostics #also #atheists #christians #communists

Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death. ↗

— Edna Ferber

#defeat #itself #life #love #lover

Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic. ↗

— Raymond Chandler

#critic #critical #evaluation #good #maintaining

Directing, writing, producing and starring is just too tough. ↗

— Stephen Chow

#just #producing #starring #too #tough