Writing Quotes

People can hear my songs are coming from something real. I mean what I say; I’m not just writing to impress critics or young girls, or older girls. The way I talk is the way I write a song.

I’ve always written poetry but I didn’t realise it was a therapy for me until I was maybe 15. That’s when my singing started to come together as well because I was listening to so much jazz. What I love I will always embrace.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.

Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

I am the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.