Sharon Olds Quotes

Lena Dunham or Miranda July, those people are sort of thinking about their work in a slightly different way than I do, where their whole body is a seed of what they're creating. I can't imagine watching Miranda's movies with anybody else playing her role, she's so integral. But for me, it feels more like every story is really individual. If I thought of something else, or thought it should be my body representing it, I'd fold my body into it. But most of the time I'm writing to get something out of my body.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

Everyone's different. I mean, some people write journals for their characters and stuff, but that was never really my area.

Everybody expresses themselves in different ways. Some people write it down, some people paint it. Some people express it in the way they speak. We just express our feelings through music.

I wrote for many years without showing my writing to anyone, because I was constantly comparing it to what I was reading. You have to compare yourself to the best and feel totally inadequate.

Writing is extremely personal, and that's the joy of it for me.

A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.

It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its impression on all his performances.

The thing that usually gets me through the writing is that my feelings of wretched inadequacy are irregularly punctuated by brief flashes of omnipotence.

My wanting to write books annihilates the original root impulse that would have me bravely and blunderingly working on them.

You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.

I'm definitely feeling whatever's going on pretty hard. It's like playing Barbies. You're holding the Barbies, but all of the action is happening inside of your head. You might be holding them or even speaking out loud, but really, all of the animation is internal. That's sort of how I feel about my writing. And then the really awful thing is that at the end of the day after crying and experiencing things, then you look at what you've written and you're like, "Hmm, there's half a page that's good here." Then you throw out everything else.

I think writing is a much more personal thing.

I don't trust myself enough. When I write, I overwrite. Gingerbread. Too much gingerbread. Writing is probably the only hobby I have. But I wish I had another one. If I was just a little better at golf.

Starting is hard so I really need to give myself permission to do a bad job. I always give myself leave to write total nonsense for as long as I need to release the pressure, because it's really hard to start if you feel like that first sentence you write has to actually mean something.

I wish it was clear for me how it happened [stop writing songs], then maybe I could start writing again. But it's kind of an "it." It just submerged itself. Because the way I had always written was just that it came out. It just happened.

It's a weird job because making music or writing a song is a personal thing... and it kind of has to be. You can always tell when people are faking.

There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

I wish I could write. I get these ideas but I never seem to be able to put them in words.

Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy

None of us older writers had gone through such a school. We are all self-taught. And, of course, there is always, in such a school, the danger of goose-stepping, uniformed ranks. But the Serapion Brethren have already, it seems to me, outgrown this danger. Each of them has his own individuality and his own handwriting. The common thing they have derived from the studio is the art of writing with ninety-proof ink, the art of eliminating everything that is superfluous, which is, perhaps, more difficult than writing.

When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I'll come.'

Why did I write? What sin to me unknown dipped me in ink, my parents , or my own?

I think a lot of people are very good, but I don't think anybody could do my rhythm. I was thinking, "If you want my rhythm" - and when I was writing, I was writing them for myself - "why am I watching another actor doing what I should be doing?" It was just a really unpleasant experience.

I'm not Akira Kurosawa. He used to write...He used to write a completely new spec script over a couple of nights. I'm not like that. It takes me a long time to put a film together that I want to make.