William J. Brennan Jr. Quotes

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell.

But I'm the only one who can paint the moon, because I'm the only one who knows whether that's right or not.

I think one can be more honest in fiction than in a memoir.

I always tell students that writing a poem and publishing it are two quite separate things, and you should write what you have to write, and if you're afraid it's going to upset someone, don't publish it.

You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense.

Writing is a form of licensed madness.

My job is to put words together and tell a story. If that doesn't work for you, it's not a war crime.

I love writing, but I have that E. E. Cummings idea that as long as you stay inside the rules of your own world, it doesn't matter what it is.

I try not to spend too much time interpreting my comics for people, because I try to put out there whatever I can, and people can draw whatever conclusions they want.

It's not my responsibility to write plays about the way the world should be.

Everyone is their own kind of poet - you can't miss it when their words are written down.

People misinterpret my lyrics sometimes too, but I mean, it is what it is.

Part of writing is discovering the rules of the game and then deciding whether to follow the rules or to break them. The great thing about the game of poetry is that it's always your turn - I guess that goes back to my being an only child. So once it's under way, there is a sense of flow.

I want it to be more universal than that - like a painter doesn't have to explain his life story away to justify his painting.

Even at the time, I realised this couldn't be right, that this interpretation didn't fit with the rest of the lyrics. But that wasn't an issue with me. The song was about what I said, and I used to listen to it again and again, on my own, whenever I got the chance.

I thought, if I write a book that is not a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, it's not going to mean that I will not get any criticism. I might as well write the book that I want to write.

Don't worry about how you 'should' draw it. Just draw it the way you see it.

My trade and my art is living. He who forbids me to speak about it according to my sense, experience, and practice, let him orderthe architect to speak of buildings not according to himself but according to his neighbor; according to another man's knowledge, not according to his own.

Even if someone thinks there's a mistake I've made on the piano, to me it's not a mistake; it's how it's meant to be.

I use color in a completely arbitrary way in order to express myself powerfully.

Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!

Expression and the right to express is vital, anyone can be artistic.

All of my movies are about how I wish the world would work. I've made very few movies about how the world worked. I could name them on one and a half hands, about how my movies have been very reflective of how the world was exactly. A lot of my movies are really about the way I wish the world was, and that's what this whole art form is all about. It's an interpretive art form.