We love the old saints, missionaries, martyrs, and reformers. Our Luthers, Bunyans, Wesleys and Asburys, etc... We will write their biographies, reverence their memories, frame their epitaphs, and build their monuments. We will do anything except imitate them. We cherish the last drop of their blood, but watch carefully over the first drop of our own.
I couldn't write a song to save my life. I wouldn't say that I started to panic, but I was definitely getting frustrated. I couldn't even cross a t or dot an i.
he who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.
There even are places where English completely disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years! Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
Epithets, like pepper, Give zest to what you write; And if you strew them sparely, They whet the appetite: But if you lay them on too thick, You spoil the matter quite!
It's still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.
Writing the record for me - every record is almost a surprise. When people ask me, what are the themes you want to grapple with on this one? I have no idea until the record's finished.
I try not to write more than two or three, I try to just write one if possible, I write till the end at least a draft of a play or a novel; but sometimes, I'll take a break for a couple weeks for a project that is paying me money like a television project which I try to stay away from just to stay financially ahead of the game.
I live here among the ignorant like a lost man in fact like one whom the rest seems careless of having anything to do with — they hardly dare talk in my company for fear I shoud mention them in my writings & I find more pleasure in wandering the fields then in mixing among my silent neighbours who are insensible of everything but toiling & talking of it & that to no purpose.
The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day ... you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don't think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.
To be allowed to call her "Dora", to write to her, to dote upon and worship her, to have reason to think that when she was with other people she was yet mindful of me, seemed to me the summit of human ambition - I am sure it was the summit of mine.
I think writers can respond by writing about the refugee crisis, by looking at problems faced by migrants, by trying hard to portray them as the human beings that they are.
I don't think you ever write a song with any intention except the song's about such and such per say ... we've never written a song and thought 'oh it'd be great if in this part this happened in the audience'.