David B. Coe Quotes

For me writing is foremost a mode of thinking and when it works well, an act of discovery

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

I like to write about questions that interest me, not the conclusions I've come to.

I don't write books because I have answers. I write books because I have questions. What we are is the questions that we ask, not the answers that we provide. It's all about the process of self-examination. I think that's what the best writing always contains.

Architecture is a result of a process of asking questions and testing them and re-interrogating and changing in a repetitive way.

Since I was a child, I started to ask very difficult questions; even my family was telling me all the time, 'You're a very difficult person, and we were having trouble answering your questions. Why are you asking so many questions?'

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection.

Theater is there to search for questions. It doesn't give you instructions.

Writing is the process of asking the next logical question.

I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

I love to write a book out of questions; in fact, I think it's the only way my writing can operate, if there's something I don't understand.

The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.

I cannot look at a question and not try to find the answer, even if I don't know it.

We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered, we get wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as a snail carries its shell.

The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering.

There are no sure answers, only better questions.

I just start writing, and in the process, one hopefully comes up with ideas and solutions and explores all the little nooks and crannies.

Many times I have written something, and after it was published, I understood what I was saying.

If you're interested in something, do some more research and don't be afraid to ask questions. At the very worst you're going to know more than you did at the start of the day.

I think that writing is a process that tells you what you think. You sometimes actually don't know what your opinion is until you hear yourself trying to piece it out and have it make sense to you. The process itself is so bizarre and mysterious that you never know what it's going to tell you.

When you start to write, things begin to come into focus in a way they don't when you're not writing. It's a very good way to find out how much you don't know because you learn specifically what you need to know that you don't know at the moment by writing.

You are your own best teacher. My advice is to question all things. Seek for answers, and when you find what seems to be an answer, question that, too.

I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don't have answers to.

The best creative solutions don't come from finding good answers to the questions that are presented... They come from inventing new questions!