254 Process Quotes

The thing has already taken form in my mind before I start it. The first attempts are absolutely unbearable. I say this because I want you to know that if you see something worthwhile in what I am doing, it is not by accident but because of real direction and purpose.

Writing anything, it sorta starts the way you'd build a castle at the beach. You're just taking your hands and you're mounting up sand.

Movement, change, light, growth, and decay are the life-blood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work.

My sculpture can last for days or a few seconds - what is important to me is the experience of making. I leave all my work outside and often return to watch it decay.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

I'm an instant star. Just add water and stir.

Nothing, believe me, nothing is more satisfying to me personally than getting a great idea and then beatin' it to death.

Winners take time to relish their work, knowing that scaling the mountain is what makes the view from the top so exhilarating.

Any serious attempt to try to do something worthwhile is ritualistic.

I would rather start a family than finish one.

Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.

I really do work in solitude.

It's hard for me to show work while I'm writing, because other people's comments will influence what happens.

My novels aren't really generated by a single conceptual spark; it's more a process of many different elements that come together unexpectedly over a long period of time.

In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.

What is certain is that setting a piece of nature in place and drawing it are two very different things.

By circumstance and perhaps also by inclination, I think in complete intellectual isolation. To expect others to help me think seems to me almost like expecting them to help me digest my food.

Actual creativeness is a matter of moments. One has to piece together the minute grains to make a lump. And it is so easy to miss the momentary flashes, it is like sluicing in placer mining. He who lets the flakes float by has nothing to show for his trouble.

We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.

Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.

Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer says you're out of it.

I put the words down and push them a bit.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

Why, I just shake the buildings out of my sleeves.

If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.

Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward.

When you are happy it is harder to write [songs].

When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.

I have been no more than a medium, as it were.

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

Be a mere assistant to your unconscious. Do only half the work. The rest will do itself.

The artist may be well advised to keep his work to himself till it is completed, because no one can readily help him or advise him with it...but the scientist is wiser not to withhold a single finding or a single conjecture from publicity.

I don't really start until I get my proofs back from the printers. Then I can begin my serious writing.

I once wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which, however, I'll write to you now because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.

Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.

One writer, for instance, excels at a plan or a title page, another works away at the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index.

Yo no busco, yo encuentro.

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.

A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage in a series of inner transformations.

'I publicly appeal to our President, our Prime Minister and the members of our Government to withdraw the Bill until such time as proper consultations can be held and appropriate amendments made.'

The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.

A motion to adjourn is always in order.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.

How does thought take shape?

The creation of an idea, the following of a story germ, the building up of a plot, the creating of people of flesh-and-blood character - these are not easy things, they are extremely difficult. But conversely, don't be put off by the fact that this month you can't do it and next month is maybe even harder. This is, if not a lifetime process, it's awfully close to it. The writer broadens, becomes deeper, becomes more observant, becomes more tempered, becomes much wiser over a period time passing. It is not something that is injected into him by a needle. It is not something that comes on a wave of flashing, explosive light one night and say, 'Huzzah! Eureka! I've got it!' and then proceeds to write the great American novel in eleven days. It doesn't work that way. It's a long, tedious, tough, frustrating process, but never, ever be put aside by the fact that it's hard.

I would like to create a speedier and more efficient system. Careers and reputations are at stake, and it would be good to be able to inject a sense of calm and transparency into procedures.

When asked, 'How do you write?' I invariably answer, 'one word at a time.'

I don't take notes; I don't outline, I don't do anything like that. I just flail away at the goddamn thing. I'm a salami writer. I try to write good salami, but salami is salami. You can't sell it as caviar.

What you can't do is have a situation where you get a rejection of the treaty and then you just bring it back with a few amendments and say we will have another go. You can't do that and I am not going to get drawn into speculating the way forward because I don't intend to lose the referendum.

He wants a Bill of Rights for Britain drafted by a Committee of Lawyers. Have you ever tried drafting anything with a Committee of Lawyers?

To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn't know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up.

At no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny, as when we are busy with preparations for it. After that, there remains only the journey itself, which is nothing but the process through which we lose our ownership of it.

I was trying to write a book that simply would not come. I did my daily five hundred words, but the characters never began to live. So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and change conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends. But this hate and suspicion, this passion to destroy went deeper than the book - the unconscious worked on it instead:

'My painting does not come from the easel. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.' -Quoted in 'Jackson Pollock: is he the greatest living painter in the United States?' LIFE 8 Aug. 1949: 42-45

A dripping wet canvas covered the entire floor. ... There was complete silence. ... Pollock looked at the painting. Then, unexpectedly, he picked up can and paint brush and started to move around the canvas. It was as if he suddenly realized the painting was not finished. His movements, slow at first, gradually became faster and more dance like as he flung black, white, and rust colored paint onto the canvas. He completely forgot that Lee and I were there; he did not seem to hear the click of the camera shutter. ... My photography session lasted as long as he kept painting, perhaps half an hour. In all that time, Pollock did not stop. How could one keep up this level of activity? Finally, he said 'This is it.'

Mozart wrote everything with such ease and speed as might at first be taken for carelessness or haste. His imagination held before him the whole work clear and lively once it was conceived. One seldom finds in his scores improved or erased passages. ~ Franz Niemetschek

Find first, seek later.