William Landay Quotes

The fun thing about song writing is that it's just creative. It can be whatever you want it to be. For me, I'm really protective of that. I'm not going to write something because I feel like it fits here or it fits there - I just want to write music that feels good to me, you know?

I have never written for an audience. On the other hand I do not write merely to please myself.

I don't feel like I'm on a mission. I'm trying to play music that I like to play and like to listen to.

I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true.

I'm not thinking when I'm writing, 'How's this going to read?' Or, 'What percentage of the audience is going to stay with me?' The thing itself is what gives me pleasure. Sometimes stuff just falls onto the page so beautifully and happily that it's deeply satisfying. It's selfish!

You'll go mad trying to figure out what people want. I don't bother. I write the stories I want to read.

If it pleases you and you can write at all, it's gonna please somebody else.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell.

As a writer, you have to first of all write what you want to. Listen to advice, by all means, but don't get bogged down in it.

The deeper I get into my life as a musician, I'm discovering that it becomes less and less about other people, and more about what I want to do. And that's a good place to be.

Don't write your books for people who won't like them. Give yourself wholly to the kind of book you want to write, and don't try to please readers who like something different.

I only write music for myself, I don't try and appeal to anyone else.

I make the kind of music I like.

I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It's totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.

I'm a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

I sometimes listen to music I made and find it to be something I wouldn't want to buy from a store, if there was a store. When it's like that, you have to make what you want to hear.

I do want to make music that people love, but I also want to make music that I love. I know I can't please everyone with anything I do, so I don't think too much about how other people are going to take things.

Writing is much more satisfying on a certain level than acting ever was. Because you're not interpreting someone else's original idea, you can come up with your own.

Part of my problem as a young writer was that I was too much a New Yorker, always second-guessing the 'market.' I became so discouraged that I decided to write something that would please me alone - that became my sole criterion. And that was when I wrote 'Forgetting Elena,' the first novel I got published.

Either you live by the barometer of the music critics, or you live by your own. I choose the latter.

I can only say that I myself wrote always as I wished, without a tremendous desire to find the latest thing possible.

When I sat down to write 'Rules of Civility,' I didn't write it for anybody but myself. I wasn't trying to make my mark or make money. I wasn't anxious about feeding my kids or whether my father would be proud of me.

When I did TV shows and my other movies, I never try to do it for anybody. I just do what I think is good no matter what the genre is.

If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.