Quotes & Sayings About Passionate Writing

Its clear friendliness seemed to ring out audibly amid this appalling hush of the harmonies of life. "I wish you might know a day's friendliness or a day's freedom, yours without question, without condition, and till death." Here was the voice of nature, of appointed protection; the sound of it aroused her early sense of native nearness to her cousin; had he been at hand she would have sought a wholesome refuge in his arms. She sat down at her writing-table, with her brow in her hands, light-headed with her passionate purpose, steadying herself to think. A day's freedom had come at last; a lifetime's freedom confronted her. For, — Henry James

Do activities you're passionate about - which make your heart and soul feel perky - including things like working out, cooking, painting, writing, yoga, hiking, walking, swimming, being in nature, being around art, or reading inspiring books. — Karen Salmansohn

Amanda herself couldn't understand why her writing was so different from her own personality. Her pen seemed to take on a life of its own when she sat before a sheaf of blank parchment paper. She wrote about characters unlike any people she had ever known... sometimes violent, brutal, always passionate; some who came to ruin and some who even triumphed in spite of their own lack of morality. Since she had no actual pattern on which to base these fictional characters, Amanda realized that their feelings, their passions, could only have come from inside herself. — Lisa Kleypas

I'm so passionate about my writing, there's page-spunk pouring out of my fingertips. — Hertzan Chimera

More than half of my former students teach - elementary and high school, community college and university. I taught them to be passionate about literature and writing, and to attempt to translate that passion to their own students. They are rookie teachers, most likely to be laid off and not rehired, even though they are passionate. — Susan Straight

I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my "real" life again at last. That is what is strange - that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone here and "the house and I resume old conversations". — May Sarton

I've been very blessed to make a living in stuff I love and am totally passionate about, music and writing. So I'm eager to see what the day will bring, how I will feed that passion. — John Densmore

I write at eighty-five for the same reasons that impelled me to write at forty-five; I was born with a passionate desire to communicate, to organize experience, to tell tales that dramatize the adventures which readers might have had. I have been that ancient man who sat by the campfire at night and regaled the hunters with imaginative recitations about their prowess. The job of an apple tree is to bear apples. The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation. — James A. Michener

Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling - I don't think it's any of that - it's helpless ... it's absence of control - and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers ... and anger doesn't provide any of that - I have no use for it whatsoever.
[Interview with CBS radio host Don Swaim, September 15, 1987.] — Toni Morrison

What strikes me now as the most wonderful proof of my fitness, or unfitness, for the times is the fact that nothing people were writing or talking about had any real interest for me. Only the object haunted me, the separate, detached, insignificant thing. It might be a part of the human body or a staircase in a vaudeville house; it might be a smokestack or a button I had found in the gutter. Whatever it was it enabled me to open up, to surrender, to attach my signature. To the life about me, to the people who made up the world I knew, I could not attach my signature. I was as definitely outside their world as a cannibal is outside the bounds of civilized society. I was filled with a perverse love of the thing-in-itself - not a philosophic attachment, but a passionate, desperately passionate hunger, as if in this discarded, worthless thing which everyone ignored there was contained the secret of my own regeneration. — Henry Miller

A voice is a product of the writer's own Pandora Box of insight, insecurities, bravado, modesty, humility, affection, understanding, and confidence. In short, a voice reflects the writers' sangfroid. The tenor of the writer's voice also reflects their insecurities, self-doubt, egotism, testiness, and the ability to identify with their mental and physical infirmities. The inflection that distinguishes a writer's pitch from other wordsmiths' tone reflects their collective lifetime of mundane, tranquil, disturbing, and passionate experiences. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I'm passionate again about writing. This is important to me; it's got to be the comeback book. — Jeffrey Archer

Ideas come when we do not expect them, and not when we are brooding and searching at our desks. Yet ideas would certainly not come to mind had we not brooded at our desks and searched for answers with passionate devotion. — Max Weber

As an actor, it's a relatively passive job unless you're generating your own content or writing your own content. So to a certain degree you're at the mercy of what is available, what you're reading, what you become passionate about, and ultimately, what people want to hire you for. — Elijah Wood

The best kind of happiness is a habit you're passionate about. — Shannon L. Alder

Before I published any of my own stories, I read a great many stories by people as passionate about writing as I was, and I learned something from everyone I read
something most important what I should not try to write. — Dorothy Allison

I am profoundly uncertain how to write. I know what I love and what I like, because it's a direct passionate response. But when I write, I'm very uncertain whether it's good enough. That is, of course, the writer's agony. — Susan Sontag

I think I've lived a pretty hard life. What I mean by hard is that ... I've been kind of reckless with things. I'm a passionate person. I'm a super passionate person. I think there's definitely been sorrow in my life, good and bad. I think it comes through. I hope it comes through in my writing because to me that's what artistry is. — Kip Moore

I actually write as a passion, as something I actually am more passionate about than acting. — Evangeline Lilly

As a writer of worship songs, I have a hunger to write deep songs of passionate reverence to God. Yet I'm aware I cannot sing before I have seen. All worship is a response to a revelation
it's only as we breathe in more of the wonders of God that we can breathe out a fuller response to Him ... the key to a life of passionate and powerful worship comes from seeing God. — Matt Redman

[Speaking about writing her first novel] You have to be passionate enough about it and I was. — Kristyn Van Cleave

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling? — George Saunders

Because there are a million thoughts that never sleep
and a million more that wake up as each second passes by ...
And it's insanity inside
but I can no longer keep quiet
Oh, I can't speak as well
I need to write
I have to write ... — Sanhita Baruah

If you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else. — Charles Bukowski

I don't think you can reach your potential as a writer unless you're a passionate reader, AND read passionately. — Michelle D. Kwasney

I tried to stick with what I knew best, which is writing rock n' roll songs and melodies. I am as passionate as I was when I was 20. — Gary Cherone

My artistic goal was to write something that's one hundred percent real and true to me and to this world. I tried to touch on truths that really connect with people from every avenue of life. Ultimately, when you write from a vantage point of faith, humility and openness to the world around you, people have to respond because those same truths are instilled in them. Honestly, I don't have any agenda other than being sincere, real, and passionate about these songs and the music I make. — Mat Kearney

My beloved husband goes through radiation, and a book of sonnets is my passionate response. And then after he dies, I write another book of poems as a farewell. The two keywords here are passion and joy. I simply have a passion for writing, and I do it with joy. — Jane Yolen

I'm a passionate believer in revision, and a lot of my writing gets done during revision process. It isn't just tweaking: I tend to break it apart and remake it every time I do a new draft. — John Jeremiah Sullivan

I'm writing and putting together my next few things. Even during the Red Army process, I've been writing and developing things, so that now that I'm done and with efforts supporting it throughout this process, I'm armed and ready to go with some things that I'm really passionate about. — Gabe Polsky

I think in order to write really well and convincingly, one must be somewhat poisoned by emotion, dislike, displeasure, resentment, fault-finding, imagination, passionate remonstrance, a sense of injustice-they all make fine fuel. — Edna Ferber

The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart. — Natalie Goldberg

You can, in short, lead the life of the mind, which is, despite some appalling frustrations, the happiest life on earth. And one day, in the thick of this, approaching some partial vision, you will (I swear) find yourself on the receiving end of - of all things - an "idea for a story," and you will, God save you, start thinking about writing some fiction of your own. Then you will understand, in what I fancy might be a blinding flash, that all this passionate thinking is what fiction is about, that all those other fiction writers started as you did, and are laborers in the same vineyard. — Annie Dillard

The advice to "kill your darlings" has been attributed to various authors across the various galaxies... and Mister Heist hated them all.
Why teach young writers to edit out whatever it is they feel most passionate about?
Better to kill everything in their writing they DON'T love as much.
Until only the darlings remain. — Brian K. Vaughan

Being passionate about something is the most beautiful characteristic you can develop. — Charlotte Eriksson

I want to read every book that's written
hear every song that was sung
I want to gaze at every cloud
and hold the zing of each fruit on my tongue. — Sanober Khan

When a sculptor creates a sculpture, a writer writes a novel, or a painter paints a motif on a canvas, he needs talent and expertise. But to be successful in his endeavor, he also needs to have the passionate feeling that he wants, at all costs, to create a work of art which, in his head, constantly demands to be accomplished. The same also applies to developing board games or card games. — Klaus Teuber

There's a fantastic, thousand-page book by David Thomson about [David O. Selznick]. Again, it's not the best argument or the best advertisement for his story, because most people aren't going to read a thousand-page book. But I feel like the rise and fall and the work [Mayer] produced - not just the movies, but the memos, the volume of writing - he's just so passionate, and that's really exciting. — Karina Longworth

When a chap is passionate, the readership can sense it. — Sara Sheridan

Who is setting the bar for what you call accessibility? The definition of "accessible" is "easy to understand," and so much of the fiction I love is just ... not that. It is complex and rich and sometimes puzzling, and it stays with me precisely because I can't quite wrap my head around it. Sometimes it is lucid and approachable on the surface, and other times the language is congested in order to fire up strong sensations. Accessibility is such a strange, sad measure of the writing I love. Dora the Explorer is accessible. The Unconsoled is not. But I have never been deliberately difficult, if that's what you're getting at. That has no appeal to me. I've always tried to write the fiction that compels me the most - I have to feel passionate, engaged, and nearly desperate if I'm going to get anything done. When I'm working on material that is conceptual or abstract or in some way difficult, I strive for clarity, transparency, a vivid attack. — Ben Marcus

I definitely write about things that are universal, that everyone can identify with. You're supposed to write about things you're passionate about and I guess I am a foodie. I do love food and it's kind of like I'm an eccentric observationalist guy. To make it kind of universal, I try a lot of different things. When I first started writing this, I was like, 'No food.' Then, you know, it just always goes there. — Jim Gaffigan

I love acting in the theater,but I'm fascinated with acting on film. If it's a film or a play or whatever, if the writing is good and you really feel passionate about it, you just can't lose. You'll grow from it. Whether it's a success or not is neither here nor there; you're going to grow as an artist from this experience. — Jonathan Groff

Some people see me as dissecting my characters in some kind of heartless, coldblooded, analytical way, when in truth making these movies is a passionate, intensely emotional experience for me. I'm detached from the characters only to the degree that I have to be in order to write honestly about them. — Todd Solondz

If any writer in this country has collected as fine and passionate a group of readers as I have, they're fortunate and lucky beyond anyone's imagination. It remains a shock to me that I've had a successful writing career. Not someone like me; Lord, there were too many forces working against me, too many dark currents pushing against me, but it somehow worked. Though I wish I'd written a lot more, been bolder with my talent, more forgiving of my weaknesses, I've managed to draw a magic audience into my circle. They come to my signings to tell me stories, their stories. The ones that have hurt them and made their nights long and their lives harder. — Pat Conroy

She loved me deeply, madly and passionately. She knew no other way! — Avijeet Das

Reality is a magic lady, sometimes very mysterious. To me she is very passionate. She is real not only when she is awake, walking down the streets, but also at night when she is dreaming or when she is having nightmares. When I am writing, I am always paying tribute to her - to that lady called Reality. — Eduardo Galeano

Personally, I think so-called "common language" is more interesting and apropos than "proper English"; it's passionate and powerful in ways that "wherefore art thou ass and thy elbow" just isn't. — J.R. Ward

My greatest strength as a writer is that I'm a storyteller. But, it was a long, hard struggle for me to make the transition from verbally telling stories to writing them. You'll note I don't dwell on descriptions in my writing, because I'm far more interested in telling the story. There are many better writers in this world, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone more passionate about stories than I am. — Debbie Macomber

The look that one directs at things, both outward and inward, as an artist, is not the same as that with which one would regard the same as a man, but at once colder and more passionate. As a man, you might be well-disposed, patient, loving, positive, and have a wholly uncritical inclination to look upon everything as all right, but as an artist your daemon constrains you to "observe", to take note, lightning fast and with hurtful malice, of every detail that in the literary sense would be characteristic, distinctive, significant, opening insights, typifying the race, the social or the psychological mode, recording all as mercilessly as though you had no human relationship to the observed object whatever. — Joseph Campbell

The problem with me is that I cannot focus when she is on my mind. I can't. I probably will make a mistake when writing that paper and will start writing everything I feel about her - the professor will be very happy with that, I am sure. Oh well, such is my life. I guess I've been attempting my best to forget her for several weeks now. But even in that act of forgetting her, I am remembering her. I am recollecting her and recreating her in my mind. And that's where everything falls apart. In remembering her, I remember her goodness. In remembering her, I remember her weaknesses and my own. In remembering her, I am remembering myself. Out of that dark cave of mine, I call myself out. And then all of the remembering starts again. I doodle, I twitch, I aim restlessly for some unseen goal. And then my thoughts drift to you.
I'll let them stay there for now. Just for a minute.
Or two. — Moses Y. Mikheyev

I attribute the black tones in my films to Stephen King, Tim Burton, Joe Hill and Richard Matheson. However, most of my writing is influenced by mental health. I'm incredibly passionate about shedding light on the stigmas associated with mental illnesses. — Anna Akana

I just try to be true to myself and write about things I'm passionate about. I think what most people don't like about movies is they can tell that most movies are a product, and they don't mean that much to the people who make them. — Judd Apatow

I have a theory of my own about what the art of the novel is, and how it came into being ... It happens because the storyteller's own experience ... has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart. — Murasaki Shikibu

She was a passionate reader, and she thought that reading was one of the noblest efforts of all; in contrast, she found writing to be a great waste of time - a childish self-indulgence, even messier than finger painting - but she admired reading, which she believed was an unselfish activity that provided information and inspiration. She must have thought it a pity that some poor fools had to waste their lives writing in order for us to have sufficient reading material. (page 236) — John Irving

Sandeep Jauhar's Doctored is a passionate and necessary book that asks difficult questions about the future of medicine. The narrative is gripping, and the writing is marvelous. But it was the gravity of the problem - so movingly told - that grabbed and kept my attention throughout this remarkable work. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

The thing that I'm most passionate about, I'm writing a book called 'Jab Jab Jab Jab Jab Right Hook,' and it really focuses on how to story-tell in a noisy, ADD world. — Gary Vaynerchuk

I like when people are very passionate about what they want to write about. Even if it's silly, you can be very passionate about it. — Judd Apatow

It's always gratifying to hear from a passionate reader, and as a longtime educator, I'm especially pleased and heartened when that reader is a young student who is inspired to write me and let me know that my book has helped him or her find her way. — Julia Alvarez

Be passionate about what you write, believe in your ability to convey timeless ideas, and let no one tell you what what you're capable of. — Christina Westover

The true artist plays mad with his soul, labors at the very lip of the volcano, but remembers and clings to his purpose, which is as strong as the dream. He is not someone possessed, like Cassandra, but a passionate, easily tempted explorer who fully intends to get home again, like Odysseus. — John Gardner

I think enthusiasm is the answer to passionate writing. — Jerome Lawrence

I am a passionate, not an intellectual writer, which means my characters must plunge ahead of me to live the story — Ray Bradbury

It takes me awhile to find something that I'm passionate about. I'm reading a lot and thinking a lot, and torturing myself a lot because I'm feeling really guilty for not writing something today. — Paul Haggis

Who Am I?
I'm a creator, a visionary, a poet. I approach the world with the eyes of an artist, the ears of a musician, and the soul of a writer. I see rainbows where others see only rain, and possibilities when others see only problems. I love spring flowers, summer's heat on my body, and the beauty of the dying leaves in the fall. Classical music, art museums, and ballet are sources of inspiration, as well as blues music and dim cafes. I love to write; words flow easily from my fingertips, and my heart beats rapidly with excitement as an idea becomes a reality on the paper in front of me. I smile often, laugh easily, and I weep at pain and cruelty. I'm a learner and a seeker of knowledge, and I try to take my readers along on my journey. I am passionate about what I do. I learned to dream through reading, learned to create dreams through writing, and learned to develop dreamers through teaching. I shall always be a dreamer. Come dream with me. — Sharon M. Draper

Frankly, if there ever was a time when I was really happy, it wasn't during those first intoxicating moments of my success, but long before that, when I hadn't yet read or shown my manuscript to anyone -- during those long nights of ecstatic hopes and dreams and passionate love of my work, when I had grown attached to my vision, to the characters I had created myself, as though they were my own offspring, as though they really existed -- and I loved, rejoiced and grieved over them, at times even shedding quite genuine tears over my guileless hero. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

With my human rights advocacy, that's always been through my writing. I've always tried to write articles and contribute to journals and a lot of online journals - about human rights, especially Palestinian human rights. I find the time to do things to do things I'm passionate about, because I find enjoyment in them. I just have to juggle. — Randa Abdel-Fattah

My passionate leisure pursuit are reading, wondering and writing. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I made a big conscious decision in my life when I was writing all these big action movies and doing different kind of fare but very proud of it, I was finding myself less and less passionate about doing it. — Ric Roman Waugh

You don't deserve my image in your head. You don't deserve my memories in your chest. — Coco J. Ginger

Lyrics paved my teenage route to loving words. I take those passionate mini-stories with me everywhere. — Carla H. Krueger

The things you're passionate about and interested in, get experience with them by going deep on projects. I would encourage science projects, plays. Pursue science, math, writing, history - the 21st century demands a lot of cross-disciplinary thinking. — Megan Smith

A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite of passion. — Roman Payne

Three characteristics a work of fiction must possess in order to be successful:
1. It must have a precise and suspenseful plot.
2. The author must feel a passionate urge to write it.
3. He must have the conviction, or at least the illusion, that he is the only one who can handle this particular theme. — Isaac Bashevis Singer