Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

By the time I sit down ready to write, I've done a lot of longhand and a lot of note collecting along the way.

When I'm writing a script, before I can write dialogue or anything, I have two or three hundred pages of notes, which takes me a year. So, it's not like "what happens next." I've got things that I'm thinking about but I don't settle on them. And if I try to write dialogue before then, I can't. It's just garbage.

I'm getting ready to write a piece now, and it's been six months thinking about it, changing the instrumentation, changing the name, doing more reading.

I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.

I have a very long pre-writing process where I'm jotting down ideas in a notebook and ripping out relevant newspaper articles - a long fact-finding mission.

Directing, to me, starts even before we get to the set. Directing is a fluid, an abstract thing. It's not done only purely in the moment. It's an idea that you plant before. It's a location that you show. It's something I whisper in someone's ear. It's a freeform thing. It only takes me a week to write the script, but it's years that you're thinking about it. The execution is really the fast part.

We're so used to thinking in the short term, and the minute you speak in more long-term language then you tend to get dismissed as utopian and so on. We have a real problem here in making long-term thinking respectable

I just write stuff down and pile it up, and when I get enough stuff, I spread it out and look at it and figure out how to use it.

I spend a lot of time outlining before I write the first word.

I don't know exactly where the ideas come from. One day, a sentence just popped into my head - 'There was going to be trouble, and, hell, he just wasn't in the mood for it' - and I knew I had a novel.

What I often do when I'm writing, if I can't find that story, I go out and I hunt for it.

One day, I can come up with 50 content ideas, and I'm like, 'Boom, I want to do this idea, this idea, this idea.' I have a YouTube notebook, and I write them all down. Then other days, I'm like, 'I have no clue what I want to do today.' I rarely have days like that.

I start each of my scripts by going on a journey of painstaking research and discovery, much as I do a piece of long-lead journalism.

There was a lot of work that people don't know about that I did to establish my villain persona. There were a lot of miles on the road that went into it, thousands upon thousands of hours of writing on yellow pads while driving in my car with the dome light on.

I collect words and phrases and cut things out of newspapers and keep scrapbooks and write down ideas in my phone or 10,000 notebooks all around my house. It's not very organised, but I keep collecting, so I did have a lot of material to help me to write songs.

When I find stuff that's interesting, I try to get a hold of it so that when I do need to make something really cool, I have it on hand.

I think long-term, not short-term.

There's a lot of research and time that goes into my shoots. I spend weeks on them, even for one picture.

I know some writers are meticulous planners, but I'm not one of them.

Short-termism is no good: plans must be carried through to the end.

I get worked up over an 'idea' or the ethos of an idea. I follow dreams, take notes on travels, and engage in research often - if I need names, details, facts that enhance the project.

Of course, I go into the studio with all the words written down.

As a player I think you naturally think long term and think what is the schedule in the next year or so.

Whatever project I sign up for, I try to familiarize myself with the material as much as possible before I start.

In order to be in control, you have to have a definite plan for at least a reasonable period of time. So how, may I ask, can man be in control if he can't even draw up a plan for a ridiculously short period of time, say, a thousand years, and is, moreover, unable to ensure his own safety for even the next day?