Sara Paretsky Quotes

When you write a song, you don't ask if it's good or not, or if it's gonna sell. When you write a song, you ask whether you've reached deep inside your heart and whether it's honest.

Write what you really care about. Write what you want to say because that is the experience that always rates as genuine on the page.

'Birdman' came from a very beautiful side of me, from a part of honesty and surrender about things.

I try to put all I am as a person into what I do. My intelligence, my emotion. I've done that in everything.

It's so much easier to write for a person in your life than to write for some imagined readership, so you write something that's more intimate and true.

Happiness for me is getting to write about the most important things I know.

Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsciously trying to blot out who they actually are. You want to escape yourself.

I think writers write for their consciences, they write for their own true audiences, for their souls.

The responsibility of an artist is to be honest with themselves.

Write what you care about. If you do that, you stand the best chance of doing your best writing.

Never think you can separate who you are from what you're doing.

I want to do work of meaning that speaks to a greater depth of who I am.

I was encouraged to use my voice and explore my passions outside of the sport. And when I did that, I was finally able to realize my true self-worth. I was more than that of a gymnast.

I see a skill developing of writing about not just feelings that I'm feeling, but things that I deeply care about as well.

The writing process really became natural when it was real and from my heart, and I was exposed.

Do your homework. Find your voice. Be authentic. And then dive in with purpose.

When the work you're doing every single day is so directly about who you are as an individual and who you are as a person, it can be both exhausting and empowering in different moments.

Worry less about having to fit, and focus more on what you want to make - this will always serve you.

As long as what you do reaches out to people, I don't think there's any reason to stop yourself from doing anything.

I felt like a failure for so long because I wasn't able to access myself in the way I knew I would have if I was going to make music that mattered. I knew I was going to have to learn how to be honest.

Sometimes things you write are messages to yourself. Even though I think my stuff has a particular voice because you are who you are, it's good to switch it up, professionally and personally. The dare to be great situation is always going to be the one that matters the most.

If you're trying to write something that you don't understand and embrace at the very core of you, it's not going to turn out with quite the authenticity and passion it should have.

For me, when I'm writing something really personal, I don't feel good about it. It's weird that people can connect to it and like something that came from a really crap place. You have to be quite brave to write about something that you honestly feel and think.

I'd love the opportunity to do something where I could really give my opinion, my feisty side - it'd be fun!

My lyrics come from my experiences growing up in life, trying to find out and express who I am. That's basically it. I'm not trying to be a prophet or anything like that. I'm just reflecting on life.