Walter Murch Quotes

I think computers are the ultimate writing tool. I'm a very slow writer, so I appreciate it every day.

That isn't writing at all, it's typing.

The keyboard is my journal.

Anyone who can not write should.

Whenever I try to do anything on a typewriter, it's like having this machine between me and the words; what comes out is not quite what would come out if I were scribbling.

Reading taught me how to write.

When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.

Publishing in a way doesn't have a lot to do with writing, and writing doesn't have a lot to do with publishing.

Our world is enriched when coders and marketers dazzle us with smartphones and tablets, but, by themselves, they are just slabs. It is the music, essays, entertainment and provocations that they access, spawned by the humanities, that animate them - and us.

Writing is a communication.

I try to write an essay every time I speak.

Generations of thinkers have made typewriters their frenemies, and long before there were Gmail inboxes, print correspondence stacked up, some hastily written and impulsive on the steel gadgets.

Writing, to me, conjures up a physical act, like running or eating.

Technology must remain a tool. It's a great tool, but technology is the pen to write the book. It's not the book. If you have a great pen, maybe you'll write faster or it will look better, but at the end, you have something to say, or you don't.

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

it makes a great difference to a speaker whether he has something to say, or has to say something.

A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.

The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.

Anyone can express himself or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate.

Style is important, but content comes first.

Success means being heard and don't stand there and tell me that you are indifferent to being heard. You may write for the joy of it, but the act of writing is not complete in itself. It has to end in its audience.

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

Content dictates form and style.

I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.

I enjoy writing. I enjoy communicating and connecting.