Lana Del Rey Quotes

When you write, you're alone in a room. And when someone reads a book, they're alone in a room, too, usually. It's a really intimate exchange. And so people ask me where I get the boldness to talk about this or that, but I didn't feel like it required any sort of courage, because I was alone. Sometimes it feels weird for people to read it.

It was 22 years of work in a row, right up until 1987. Twenty-two years in a row-either on tour, writing an album, or recording an album. It wasn't until 1987 that I was able to take a breath.

And I do think that great fiction, even when it's comedic, has an urgency or an inevitability to it, a sense that the writer absolutely had to write this particular story in this way.

When I'm making my music, I'm writing it, I'm producing it, I'm playing all the instruments, I'm performing. It's my own world where I do what I feel, and nobody tells me anything.

People say my content's mature, I don't think it's mature at all. I'm just a normal 20 year old. I'm opinionated.

People say, "You should write lyrics" and I say I'm quite happy not to, because I like being part of that process where you write your version of what someone else's lyrics are saying to you, and that enjoyment has never changed.

My plays are always involved with society, but I'm writing about people, too, and it's clear over the years that audiences understand them and care about them. The political landscape changes, the issues change, but the people are still there. People don't really change that much.

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is.

All of a sudden it felt like people were peering over my shoulder, wondering what I would write next. I was blocked for four years.

Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?

I've found through experience that I'm only good when I'm writing something that, in essence, only I could write. The times I've written for hire, for other people, I don't think I've done very well.

I'm not into this memoir craze that's been going on for 20 years now and doesn't seem to ever let up. People just indiscriminately say "memoir" now when it's a person writing about their own life.

To a great extent, I still write for myself, write what amuses me. Fortunately, I have a quirky sort of strange sense of humor that appeals to other people and that's good. I still sort of write for myself though there are some areas of the book I feel I have to put in and I feel I have to deliver.

I've never written for anybody else. For me, it was a challenge. I write for me. I don't write for anybody else. And what was good about it was that I was writing for somebody I knew. I knew what my mother thinks and how she feels. So it was finding that creative spirit to write about my mother.

Every story I've written was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me; it is my life.

Actually, I never tell for whom my songs are written. It's a kind of superstition! I started writing songs for not having the courage to say certain things in people's faces and started to put these feelings on paper... Over the years, became a mania and then I never talk about for whom they are made.

I hope people find my movies funny and will watch them years from now. And, in terms of writing, I hope that something remains that will not seem old-fashioned, that will still have a ­vibrancy to it 50 years from now.

I write what needs to be written the way that seems genuinely right. If what comes out of it are stories, then it is my vocation to believe in them and in the fact that they'll interest people and maybe affect their lives.

I don't ever try to anticipate my audience. I just write the songs I want to write, and hope people like 'em.

I get a lot of letters from people. They say "I want to be a writer. What should I do?" I tell them to stop writing to me and to get on with it.

I must write. If I stop writing my life will have been an abject failure. It is that already to other people. But it could be an abject failure to myself. I will not have earned death.

I don't listen to music for fun. I ain't got enough time for fun! I'm always busy writing my own music. I don't try to compete or see what other people are doing.

The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you've made a hiring mistake. The best people don't need to be managed. Guided, taught, led-yes. But not tightly managed.

A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can't do anything else, and then you have another job.

In any creative endeavor, you do have to sort of take your shots. Nobody is going to beg you to go into the creative arts. So, if you want to pursue a career in something like acting or writing, the motor and the drive have to come from you. And that does take courage because, A, a lot of people want to do it, and B, it's hard. So, you have to have the guts to put yourself out there and go for it in spite of the world saying, "You know, it would be so much easier, if you didn't pursue this." So, it does take guts.