George Orwell Quotes

All of our columnists have areas of interest and expertise that they will return to frequently, but the subject matter of any given column is up to them.

I think there are a lot of similarities between writing and music. Music is much more direct and much more emotional and that's the level I want to be at when I'm writing. Writing is much more intellectual and indirect and abstract, in a way.

I always write with an audience in mind. If I feel that [connection] coming back at me then I feel like I'm doing my job. That's why people come to my music - for some emotional experience or a perspective, either on their own lives, or on the world that they're living in.

Fine writing is a distinct disadvantage. So is unique literary style. They take attention from the subject

A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.

Writing in the first person automatically gives you a point of view.

There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

Underneath all his writing there is the settled determination to use certain words, to take certain attitudes, to produce a certain atmosphere; what he is seeing or thinking or feeling has hardly any influence on the way he writes. The reader can reply, ironically, "That's what it means to have a style"; but few people have so much of one, or one so obdurate that you can say of it, "It is a style that no subject can change.

My first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn't like math;in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything.

I think that computer programming shows in my writing. Often when I write about computer programmers I'll write about the way that they see the world and they structure the world.

Bob Wallace was my editor at Rolling Stone when I first started writing there, and he's a wonderful editor. I was in the Philippines during the Marcos overthrow, and I was up on what was called Smokey Mountain. I think it's gone now, but it was a garbage dump with a bunch of people living on it. I was talking to Bob on the phone, and I told him, "I'm a humorist. I can't write about this." And Bob told me to let my style be dictated by the subject, to take what I saw and write about it in the tone that it requires.

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. ... The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.

I believe writers should be able to write about anything - anything - but there is also a sense in which your lived experience shapes what you write and what you don't write.

I really think I write about everyday life. I don't think I'm quite as odd as others say I am.

I think age is really changing how I write and the themes that I connect with. But there are also things I'm really intrigued about.

When one is able to overcome the romantic and emotional attitude, one discovers truth even in the kitchen sink.

The academic bias against subjectivity not only forces our students to write poorly ("It is believed...," instead of, "I believe..."), it deforms their thinking about themselves and their world. In a single stroke, we delude our students into believing that bad prose turns opinions into facts and we alienate them from their own inner lives.

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake.

I write about what I want to write about, and so the film comes out as a very personal expression even if its subject matter is totally prefabricated.

I'm trying to write for people my age. And my inspiration over the years has changed dramatically.

I think that's more a reflection of the fact I've never been a student of any particular school of writing, or even listening.

The way one sees is also dependent upon one's emotional state of mind. This is why a motif can be looked at in so many ways, and this is what makes art so interesting.

In the most basic way, writers are defined not by the stories they tell, or their politics, or their gender, or their race, but by the words they use. Writing begins with language, and it is in that initial choosing, as one sifts through the wayward lushness of our wonderful mongrel English, that choice of vocabulary and grammar and tone, the selection on the palette, that determines who's sitting at that desk. Language creates the writer's attitude toward the particular story he's decided to tell.

I don't think my writing is sentimental, although it is a very sentimental thing to be a human being.

The most durable thing in writing is style. It is a projection of personality and you have to have a personality before you can project it. It is the product of emotion and perception.