Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

If you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you.

I don't project no image. I just act like myself. I write about how I feel, the emotional stage I'm in at the time. So I write from the heart. I never write from my mind. My brain, I mean.

My best writing has always been in journals.

I kept a diary as a teenager but I never would have shared it with anyone. Still, I think it's very good practice to write things down.

I think that, when you're writing your songs, there's always a debate about whether, is that you in the song? Is it not you in the song?

Writing is not lying, nor is it theft. It is a journey and search for transparency between one’s words and one’s soul.

All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.

I think your most intimate thoughts are only honest when they're in your head.

You know when you're writing, and it's just you and the computer screen, and you never think that anyone is ever going to read it... you're able to say private things when you're writing.

The thing is, about a character, it's not about being right, it's about the truth. The truth comes from within, so you have to search as an artist for the truth.

I think too many people edit themselves way too soon. There's plenty of time to edit, and it is a crucial part of it all, too.

Most writers write from their own experiences. That is where the honesty and intensity of emotions come from.

I do always write from a personal place.

I don't know, I've always written songs that are mainly about attitude, not me personally.

It's really not easy to be an artist. It's not easy to put yourself out there and be honest. I'm making things that are really happening to me, and it's not easy to share that with the world.

Had I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this; I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do - when one has found one's natural voice, one's rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful.

I never think of my audience when I write a poem. I try to write out of whatever is haunting me; in order for a poem to feel authentic, I have to feel I'm treading on very dangerous ground, which can mean that the resulting revelations may prove hurtful to other people. The time for thinking about that kind of guilt or any collective sense of responsibility, however, occurs much later in the creative process, after the poem is finished.

I think that I've always written about things that are very personal, but initially, I coded everything.

As a man lives and thinks, so he will write.

I advise writing to oneself. If you don't want to read it, nobody else is going to read it.

When you are just you, without thinking or trying to say something special, just saying what is on your mind and how you feel, then there is naturally self-respect.

In my opinion, trying to guess what readers want is the wrong approach. You have to tell your story as best you can and as true to yourself as possible. You have to be honest and fair and vulnerable and foolish and brave, and not care what anyone thinks of it.

But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.

A lot of us are too busy focusing on what we think people want to hear, as opposed to just saying what's in our hearts.

I do not correct my first imaginings by my second--well, yes, perhaps a word or so, but only to vary, not to delete. I want to represent the course of my humors and I want people to see each part at its birth.