Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.

But this is neither here nor there why do I mention it? Ask my pen, it governs me, I govern not it.

I have always thought of myself as a writer, only because I need things to direct, and I can't not write the things that I direct.

A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order.

I actually didn't want to have control of the writing on my first album. To write, you have to have time to connect with yourself. I don't have that time right now, because I'm so busy.

When I'm writing I just think there's only the page and me and nobody else.

For me, life is writing and I can do it anywhere. It doesn't matter where I am. I listen. I write. I live.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

I like to write when I feel I'm the real me.

When I write I'm never really thinking about themes or the universal.

The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.

Why my interest in writers? Well, I'm one, and many of my friends are writers. I know what it's like to write. I'm interested in the creative process. I'm fascinated by the disparity between who we are on the outside, and what we have bubbling away inside us.

Writing is so entwined with my being that I can't imagine a life without it.

Whatever's going on in my life shows up in the writing room.

I'm a fan of writing, and writing letters, because I hate when I'm trying to get a thought out, and I can't.

Each time I write, each time the authentic words break through, I am changed. The older order that I was collapses and dies. I lose control. I do not know exactly what words will appear on the page. I follow language. I follow the sound of the words, and I am surprised and transformed by what I record.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

If you're writing, you're starting in private. It can really be this amazing, private, freeing experience. Forget that it's for other people - that comes in later.

I'm a writer, and the subject is less important than the act of writing itself.

Nothing can be as astounding as life. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the sole consolation.

I started out life as a writer, and writers write in part because they don't want to talk.

I have a lot of fun writing for artists, but I'm learning to apply that fun to myself.

I guess that in a lot of ways, my writing is more of a character to me than something that I feel personally attached to.

Whatever I'm writing comes organically out of my life.

I'm writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and I'm very greedy, and I really enjoy it!