Hilton Als Quotes

Whenever you write for someone else, you're always aware - sometimes overtly, other times at an almost cellular, subliminal level - of the rules about what you can and can't do.

At the 'Times,' all journalists on every subject followed the same rules and were supposed to meet the same standards, so I never really thought about fashion writing as being in a bubble.

I don't have the notion that everybody has to write in some single academic style.

As a linguist, I see the arbitrariness of strictures editors force on me as a writer.

I write about the things I feel strongly about.

What's great is that starting a blog can get you lot of attention for your writing. But it doesn't have to be for anybody other than yourself.

If you write in category, you write knowing there's a framework, there are reader expectations.

Long after Salinger sent me away, I continued to believe his standards and expectations were the best ones.

I don't necessarily intend to publish posthumously, but I do like to write for myself.

If I haven't any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

You have to write about what's inside you. If I have to get something out, I'll do it.

I was always writing for myself. I wrote what I needed to write and hear - that's what makes it powerful.

When you are writing for the Christian culture, there is a whole gamut of expectations.

I am guaranteeing you that if you see my byline on a story, it's going to be the cleanest story you've ever read.

I write for myself. It's therapy.

I don't have an audience in mind when I write. I'm writing mainly for myself. After a long devotion to playwriting I have a good inner ear. I know pretty well how a thing is going to sound on the stage, and how it will play. I write to satisfy this inner ear and its perceptions. That's the audience I write for.

In every other aspect of their life, we have entertainment that is crafted almost to an individual. So they expect that from stand-up as well.

Is rule of thumb in writing game: if story requires many long descriptions of smells so vile that will give reader nausea, is not likely to find publisher.

You need to realize that most writing rules aren't laws, they're rules of thumb.

If the stuff you're writing is not for yourself, it won't work.

There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.

Here is a golden Rule.... Write legibly. The average temper of the human race would be perceptibly sweetened, if everybody obeyedthis Rule!

Decline of the letter, the rise of the notebook! One doesn't write to others any more; one writes to oneself.

If you want to write for yourself, get a diary. If you want to write for your friends, get a blog. If you want to write for others...become an author.