Brenda Hillman Quotes

But when I was a little kid, I was always writing stories and illustrating little books that I would create.

I always wrote little things when I was younger. My first opus was a book of poems put down in a spiral notebook at five or six, handsomely accompanied by crayon illustrations.

Children can write poetry and then, unless they're poets, they stop when reach puberty.

I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry. I want to see my children grow up well.

From an early age, I had always loved drawing. Laying on the floor, in front of the fire, drawing from my imagination, marching soldiers, dive bombers, spaceships and monsters. Now, suddenly, I was drawing from real life!

Since I was a small child, I was always writing either poems or plays... plays in which I had the starring part.

I'm still learning my craft, and I've been writing since I was nine.

The first story I can remember writing, that I truly set down on paper, was a Christmas story that I wrote when I was ten years old.

I wrote a few unsuccessful screenplays before I wrote 'Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.' I wrote them as television plays that never got made. I'm glad I wrote them - I think it was a good experience.

Were there stories I wrote along the way that were terrible clinkers? God, yes. But they were all a product of their time, and I did the best I could.

Probably induced by the asthma, I started reading and writing early on, my literary efforts from the age of about nine running chiefly to poetry and plays.

I was encouraged to be imaginative and read, and it was a great childhood for a budding writer because I had the time and the freedom to go into a world of my own.

As a younger person, I was obsessed with Ray Bradbury, and I think his stories did more to shape me as a storyteller than anybody else - even though, when I read them now, a lot of them seem overly sentimental. But that's probably the writer that I've thought about the most, even though I don't necessarily like a lot of his work.

I'm not a very good writer. I'm working at it.

I don't know what would have happened to me as a writer if I had gone to England and shaped my life out of England. Of course, I will never know, but I think I prefer what did happen.

If I could chat with anyone, it would be Claire Messud, because I think she could tell me how to get better as a writer as I age.

I didn't start really focusing on writing until I was 24.

I started to write when I was eighteen or nineteen. However, until I was about twenty-three, I didn't take it that seriously.

It's so fun to make up stories, but I find that the songs that I'm most proud of came from a real thing in my life - 'Peter Pan' being one of those.

I wrote songs when I was little, and I wrote a journal, but I don't think I knew how to let that truth come out yet.

I've been a writer since I was a kid. I've been a writer since I was, you know, dictating stories into a tape deck and trying to get my mom to type them up - when I was really, really little.

I feel like I'm getting better at being a writer.

For me, working on original material is very important.

The thing about me is that I'm very fortunate to have had the opportunities with Avenged Sevenfold in songwriting. I really think it's helped to bolster my guitar playing as well.

Growing up, I wanted to be a musician. My mother, in typical Filipino-mom fashion, would always make me go up in front of people at parties to sing. Back then, as a kid, I was mortified. In retrospect, I see that doing that as a child helped me get over my fear of being in front of people.