Writing Boundaries Quotes

Sometimes family members will ask to be kept out of certain things that I'm writing, and I try to respect that. I'd much rather have relatives than a book.

'Gatekeeper' was sort of my first attempt to put a little bit of a frame and boundaries around songwriting, and try to figure out a way to approach it that had a sort of end result in mind. I haven't written many like that.

I've met many, many writers who say they would never write about their family, never write about people they did not totally make up. But that is not the composition of my character.

Whenever you write for someone else, you're always aware - sometimes overtly, other times at an almost cellular, subliminal level - of the rules about what you can and can't do.

Knowing what I'll write about and what I won't has never really been a problem. I won't write about things that bore me.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

No one who cannot limit himself has ever been able to write.

Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

A writer must experiment with genres. Otherwise, it is a restriction on the craft.

I think the silences we have on some issues are inductive of the fact that we need to write about them more, but I think there are some issues you have to write in a sensitive way and in a way that respects the reality of the situation. If you can't do that, you should leave them alone.

I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.