Lyrical Writing Quotes & Sayings

Disgrace is a subtle, multi-layered story, as much concerned with politics as it is with the itch of male flesh. Coetzee's prose is chaste and lyrical without being self- conscious: it is a relief to encounter writing as quietly stylish as this. I was not totally convinced by Lurie's musical abilities, with regard to his proposed opera, but that is my sole complaint. — Paul Bailey

No one writes a story like Lydia Davis. In the years since she began publishing her lyrical, extremely short fiction, she has quietly become one of the most impactful influences on American writers, even if they don't know it. That's largely because she makes economy seem so easy. You could read several of her stories into a friend's voicemail box before you were cut off (and you should). You could fit one of her stories in this column. Some you could write on your palm. — Jonathan Messinger

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens. — Ville Valo

As far as I can tell, writing the essays didn't change the way I wrote poetry. Although the essays contain scattered passages that might be called lyrical, they often contain closed statements of what is only suggested in the poetry. — Pattiann Rogers

Don't write your books for people who won't like them. Give yourself wholly to the kind of book you want to write and don't try to please readers who like something different. Otherwise, you'll end up with the worst of both worlds. I write lyrical, introspective, experiential books concerned with consciousness and perception. If a reader wants to know what my protagonist's insurance policies are, he'll be better off curling up with a nice cup of chamomile tea and an actuarial table. Similarly, don't write your books for bad readers. Your books will suffer from bad readers no matter what, so write them for brilliant, big-brained and big-hearted people who will love you for feeding their minds with feasts of beauty. — Paul Harding

A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage tells of a young boy's travels through the black heart of Depression American and his search for light both metaphorical and real. Writing with a controlled lyrical passion, Marly Youmans has crafted the finest, and the truest period novel I've read in years. — Lucius Shepard

Drink up my honey eyes,
Kiss them shut every night,
And be my 'one' all my life. — Crystal Woods

When I started writing, I used the singing side of the production as a vehicle for melody and lyrical ideas. Eventually, that process of using my voice to bring ideas across became more complicated, and I felt I could use it more as an expressive tool. — M. Ward

A land of brass and steel and clockwork, of steam airships, cogs that turned and wheels that spun. — Emma Trevayne

When I write songs I write for myself ... I'm writing it as a form of expression, and hoping to find an audience, an audience that responds to music that is honest and lyrical and tells stories. — Patti Scialfa

I think rap music is rap music. I mean, are there heavy writing aspects of it? Absolutely. In a sense, is it poetry? Yeah. I've heard that so much, growing up in a house with poetry. But I think people like to use that as a shortcut for who's good and who's not. It's like the word 'lyrical' - 'lyrical' is the worst word in the entire world. — Earl Sweatshirt

For the source of the short story is usually lyrical. And all writers speak from, and speak to, emotions eternally the same in all of us: love, pity, terror do not show favorites or leave any of us out. — Eudora Welty

So you want to know all about me, Who
I am
What chance meeting of brush and canvas painted
the face
you see? what made me despise the girl
in the mirror
enough to transform her, turn her into a stranger,
only not. — Ellen Hopkins

I certainly believe you can write a narrative lyric or a lyrical narrative - why not a nyric or a larrative? — Matthea Harvey

When I first started making music, it was learning other people's songs and putting them onto four-track. Like Beatles songs and stuff. When I started writing, I used the singing side of the production as a vehicle for melody and lyrical ideas. — M. Ward

It starts off like climbing a tree or solving a puzzle - poetry, if nothing else, is just fun to write. But deeper into each and every piece, you no longer hesitate to call it work. It's passion. A poet's sense of lyrical accomplishment is then his food and water, his means of survival. — Criss Jami

I read 'Sabella or The Blood Stone' by Tanith Lee, which was hugely influential to me. I love Tanith's writing. She's just really lyrical, beautiful use of language. — Holly Black

Knock the bullshit off. Love her like crazy, endlessly, stripped of reserve and preservation. Be out of our fucking minds with love, lust and longing. Belonging. Knock on the door of uncertainty and bounce in anticipation of not knowing what resides behind it. Love whatever comes our way because it's part of us. Love every ugly word and beautiful sigh. — Pella Grace

Although he had changed his name, his history came with him, even to his writing. The rhythm of his rain-soaked childhood became a sequence of words. His memories of the understory of the great forest burst into lyrical phrases, as resinous as the sap of a pinecone, as crisp as the shell of a beetle. Sentences grew long, then pulled up short, taking on the tempo of the waves upon the shore, or swayed gently, like the plaintive song of a lone harmonica. His fury became essays that pointed, stabbed, and burned. His convictions played out with the monotonous determination of a printing press. And his affections became poems, as warm and supple as the wool of a well-loved sheep. — Pam Munoz Ryan

We tangle and merge. Love and let go. No one will ever know her like I do. I've touched every inch of skin. I've explored every part of her being. I love her shy when I pull her to my hips, my lap. I love her present uncertainty for things she knows how to do so fucking good. I love her pink flushed skin all over. — Pella Grace

I knew I had no lyrical quality, a small vocabulary, little gift of metaphor. The original and striking simile never occurred to me. Poetic flights ... were beyond my powers. On the other hand, I had an acute power of observation, and it seemed to me that I could see a great many things that other people missed. I could put down in clear terms what I saw ... I knew that I should never write as well as I could wish, but I thought, with pains, that I could arrive at writing as well as my natural defects allowed. — W. Somerset Maugham

Munch writes poetry with color. He has taught himself to see the full potential of color in art His use of color is above all lyrical. He feels color and he reveals his feelings through colors; he does not see them in isolation. He does not just see yellow, red and blue and violet; he sees sorrow and screaming and melancholy and decay. — Sigbjorn Obstfelder

I've always been a fan of plain writing. I hate metaphor-laden, heavily larded, lyrical writing. — Hank Azaria

The lyrical author is only concerned with his production, enjoys the pleasure of producing, often perhaps only after pain and effort; but he has nothing to do with others, he does not write in order that: in order to enlighten men or in order to help them along the right road, in order to bring about something; in short he does not write in order that. — Soren Kierkegaard

And if you don't live, you have nothing to write about. — Maynard James Keenan

Other than this, the room was entirely still, as if such a grand clock had stolen even the time it took for a dustmote to float across a sunbeam, needing every minute, every second it could find. — Emma Trevayne

In language that is searing and lyrical, evocative and precise, this exceptional book thinks with the zombies, specters, felons, slaves, dogs, cadavers, and other entities that are the remnants of loss and dispossession in the law. Dogs and people are abundantly present here, even as the legal fictions they are made to inhabit are exposed with acid lucidity. These are hard histories made readable by Dayan's precious acts of writing. — Donna J. Haraway

Poetry of World War I, at least in its lyrical mode, was itself the last flowering of the Age of Innocence that preceded the war, that the horrors of the trenches sparked the final blossoming, as friction gives rise to fire; that the daily nightmare unfolding before the soldiers sharpened their sense of beauty, prophecy, and mission. — Philip Zaleski

In my writing, I strive for a lyrical beauty somewhere between Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf — Christopher Paolini

You can find me in the melodies, the chord progressions, the song style and structure. The lyrical places you fine me most are in the lyrics that 'show' more than 'tell.' I like to describe what the listener is seeing and let them make up the middle rather than telling them. — Kristian Bush

How can one express the indefinable sensations that one experiences while writing an instrumental composition that has no definite subject? It is a purely lyrical process. It is a musical confession of the soul, which unburdens itself through sounds just as a lyric poet expresses himself through poetry ... As the poet Heine said, 'Where words leave off, music begins.' — Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

THE STORIES WE TELL fearlessly explores the textures of the human heart, finding a path toward hope through a Savannah that is jagged with class issues, faith misused, and broken trust. Henry loses you in a landscape peopled with secret keepers, storytellers and liars, and proves that in the end, love is the only reliable compass. This is everything you expect from Patti Callahan Henry - lyrical writing, characters worth rooting for, a sure-footed belief in the power of goodness - plus a twisty plot that will keep the pages turning long into the night. — Joshilyn Jackson

In language that's lyrical and haunting, Cheryl Strayed writes about bliss and loss, about the kind of grace that startles and transforms us in ordinary moments. — Ursula Hegi

Another indulgence...by Mo Ali, is the most complex writing of the magazine. The narration and dialogue is obscure and tangential while remaining utterly modern..."
"...The opening piece...by Mo Ali, is a lyrical account of a surreal apocalypse and is some of the most beautiful writing of the issue." - Miranda Siemienowicz, HorrorScope — Miranda Siemienowicz