Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes

What we usually consider as impossible are simply engineering problems... there's no law of physics preventing them.

If I scribbled a few words on a cocktail napkin and showed it to my family, they'd proclaim it astonishing and more culturally relevant than the Bible.

Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can't be taught.

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

I'm an artist. Artists don't need permission to work. Regardless of whether I'm acting or not, I write. I write when I'm tired in fact, because I believe your most pure thoughts surface.

Original thought, original artistic expression is by its very nature questioning, irreverent, iconoclastic.

Holding women to the idea of 'write what you know' subtly reinforces the status quo. Writing is a chance to celebrate who we are. But it's also a chance to celebrate who we could be.

I've really never let my age get in the way of my music.

If my stories make people uncomfortable, because it questions your set ideas and value systems that are convenient for a group of people or ideas that promote patriarchy and religious fanaticism, then my job as an artiste and a writer is done. The more you will cry foul, the louder my characters will speak.

I have seen my father defying societal norms and investing his time and energy on us. He was ridiculed and criticised by the community for asking girls to seek a career in wrestling. But he had vision and was least worried when elders warned him his daughters would not find grooms. I had to wrestle for him and that motivated me tremendously.

Fine writing is a distinct disadvantage. So is unique literary style. They take attention from the subject

In a lot of writing or intellectual discourse we're starting to use that model: "Oh, this is where it comes from!" I would like to concentrate on work which is more resistant to that procedure, as I think fiction is.

In a moment when criticism shows a singular dearth of direction every man has to be a law unto himself in matters of theatre, writing, and painting. While the American Mercury and the new Ford continue to spread a thin varnish of Ritz over the whole United States there is a certain virtue in being unfashionable.

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self when one does not lack wit and is familiar with all the niceties of language. Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer for everything, who has always foreseen everything, and who assumes a thousand forms in order to be right. The most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write

I wish I could be a better writer, but writing is so difficult. I get seduced by visual aesthetics. Because I just like making beautiful pictures, sometimes I wander away from making a clear statement.

As an artist you're looking for universal triggers. You want it both ways. You want it to have an immediate impact, and you want it to have deep meanings as well. I'm striving for both. But I hate it when people write things that sound like they've swallowed a f... dictionary.

When I'm writing, I really want to satisfy myself. I've got a story that I am working on and struggling with, and I want to tell it the most effective way I can. That's really what I struggle with. And the thought of who may be reading it may be there somewhere in the back of my mind - I'll never say it's not there because I don't know - but it's not really what I'm thinking about.

Anyone can express himself or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate.

I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, to hold interest. No matter how worthy the message of something, if it's dull, you're just not communicating.

I am persecuted because of my writings, I think, therefore, that I should write some more.

You've got to concentrate on the business of entertaining and writing songs. Always think different from the next person. Don't ever do a song as you heard somebody else do it.

Writing is not chewing your nails and picking your teeth, but a matter of public interest.

Writing good dialogue is art as well as craft.

Each time I have the urge in me to make a statement or send a message or to issue a manifesto, I don't bother to write a novel. I write an article and publish it in a popular newspaper, or I make a television appearance. I would not waste five years of my life in order to send to the Israeli readers a simple message such as, "Let us change a policy or stop the settlements," Or, "Let us strive for peace." This is not what it is about.

I write movies about mavericks, about people who break rules, and I don't like movies about people who are pulverised for being mavericks.