Joshua Cohen Quotes

I want things to be characters and not me. Why would I want to play me?

I made the character as much of myself as I could.

I think all writing is necessarily autobiographical to a greater or lesser extent, and the less it tries to be confessional, the more likely it is that you're somehow sneaking the things you need to say in there.

Sometimes, a writer 'character' is just a projection of a person who is writing the story, but not necessarily 'me.'

If you are any kind of writer at all, you are in all of your writings.

I paint and I draw and I write and I do other things too, and recently some people at school were asking if I'd ever publish any of my work. But I almost feel like I would have to publish it under another name because there's a definition of me out there that feels kind of stuck in the moment when it was formed.

I feel like the better version of myself is on paper... I'd rather have people know me on paper.

I get to use fiction as a way to work out my thinking and to delight readers in the process. I can't think of any deal that's better for me, and I'm always so grateful that readers have indulged me as I argue with myself in my stories.

When I was trying to achieve my goal, I started training. I became a character, and everyone was expecting me to become the 'Prince of...' or the Middle-Eastern, and I wanted to wear a mask, and I wanted to be like a luchador from Mexico. And people asked me, 'Why are you putting a mask on?' And the truth is, I did not want to deal with who I was.

A rap dude has his rap persona, his hyper version of himself. Do you know Method Man's real name? Or Elton John, Marylin Monroe? You make up this character. That's kind of what we have done with Die Antwoord, playing with characters.

Heart is tied with a lot of controversies, a lot of heartbreaks in show business. With 'Love Marie' who I really am in the real world. I feel more free, I feel more clean. I feel like people don't judge me, and that is why I shy away from being Heart when it comes to my painting.

I wanted to be as invisible as possible as an artist. I wanted to differentiate between myself and who I'm writing about.

I read a quote to the effect that we are always writing about ourselves no matter what we're doing. That may be so.

I don't want to be a commentator of my own work. If you've written the story, you've said what you want to say.

My music is a whole reflection of who I'm as an individual.

For me, Instagram had become a place where I could image myself the way I found myself.

I've always been aware that probably writing songs - stupid songs or, at least, theatrical songs - is, I dunno, I certainly don't think about that, about my persona on stage. In fact, I work really hard not to address it too much in my head.

Pen names have always fascinated me, in part because I understand the professional and economic and even societal reasons to do so.

All of my characters, I feel, have some essence of who I am in them.

It was like a dream come true for me. When you write the book, it's still intimate. It might have been a best-seller but it's still my story, as I wrote it. The moment we or they make a movie, it's not my story anymore. There's a lot of letting go involved in the process.

I think the name perfectly encapsulates my soul, and so I get to be myself with the safety of a different name.

I think as an author every character ends up low-key being some kind of self-insert.

If I had my druthers, I wouldn't have anyone's words in my script but my own, but if you want complete autonomy, just stick to novels.

The one thing a writer has to have is a pencil and some paper. That's enough, so long as she knows that she and she alone is in charge of that pencil, and responsible, she and she alone, for what it writes on that paper.

I certainly wasn't consciously hiding my identity in the earlier work, though a lot of people have brought up the fact that I drew myself without eyeballs.