Lawrence O'Donnell Quotes

You should write, write, write every day, and learn to edit and pare it right back so you're proud of every sentence, and each one is either being useful or beautiful, but hopefully both.

I write about eight hours a day, and I throw away most of what I write.

There's no such thing as easy, but it's easier when a script is good.

How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy might have been useful to provide us with more modest, more genuine things, that had less pretensions: short stories, memoirs, notes, testimonials, or at any rate, books that are open, without a preconceived plan.

I'm much faster now. When you only have a certain amount of time to write, after a while you learn to use your time well or you stop writing.

It's easy to write a good column if you've got good information. It's hard if you have to depend on style alone. I suppose there are people who can get away with styling on a regular basis. I'm not one of them. You're probably not, either.

I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.

I've never been good with deadlines. My early novels, I wrote by myself. No one knew I was writing a novel; I didn't have a contract.

The problem with writing a monthly book is that you're going through your work like a man running for a bus, red-faced and out of breath. There isn't time for reflection or critical self-examination.

Ultimately, the first, best step in getting your work noticed is to write good work. If people don't engage in your writing, no amount of serialization or free downloads is going to matter. You have to write something worth reading, and often it takes time to get at that level.

You have to go where the good writing is.

All writers have their own pet commandments.

Give me good writing, and I'll play it all day.

I just realized quite early on that I'm not going to be the type who can write a novel every two years. I think you need to feel an urgency about the act. Otherwise, when you read it, you feel no urgency, either. So I don't write unless I really feel I need to, and that's a luxury.

I don't write anything if I'm not agreeable and liking it. I'm not one of these slavers who wads up paper. It comes or it doesn't.

I don't believe in writing for goals, or else I'd write essays.

Out of the thousand writers huffing and puffing through movieland, there are scarcely fifty men and women of wit and talent... Yet, in a curious way, there is not much difference between the product of a good writer and a bad one. They both have to toe the same mark.

Mainly I love working on good writing.

I've tried writing on a computer thinking it would make me more efficient, but if you're writing crummy stuff, being efficient is no help.

One has to be ambitious to start writing.

I never got the chance to put drums on 'Watersigns,' because the company was in a rush to release it - and me.

Writing is hard, but the more you write, and enjoy what you write, the better it gets.

There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.

I used to stress out if I wasn't attaining my goals by their due date, but not anymore.

Part of being a writer is just getting it in your bones, getting the muscle memory down, just doing it.