Molly Antopol Quotes

For me, I'm constantly writing stuff that is what I'm dealing with on a personal, psychological level. And I think that I bring that to whatever I'm doing, whether it's being an actor or a writer or whatever it is I'm doing. I think you can't help but do that.

I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose-to find out what I think, to know where I stand.

Lena Dunham or Miranda July, those people are sort of thinking about their work in a slightly different way than I do, where their whole body is a seed of what they're creating. I can't imagine watching Miranda's movies with anybody else playing her role, she's so integral. But for me, it feels more like every story is really individual. If I thought of something else, or thought it should be my body representing it, I'd fold my body into it. But most of the time I'm writing to get something out of my body.

I think to the degree writers are serious, there is a greater tendency for them to write to themselves, because they're trying to compose their own thoughts. They are trying to find out what is in their minds, which is the great mystery. Finding out who you are, what is in your head, and what kind of companion you are to yourself in the course of life. I do think people have very profound lives of which they say virtually nothing.

The challenge is always as a writer, is this going to work, because it's a very intimate process, and I tend to be very introverted and insular, and when I write, it's in my head.

I wasn't quite used to writing a diary - I didn't understand why people did it - but I wrote down notes and they went into a poem.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

Having children made me go down a road of serious introspection and self-examination. I think it's informed and hopefully enhanced my creativity.

For me, writing is a solitary thing and a personal thing. And it's weird, because when you make something that requires money and collaborators, you have to talk about them. I don't enjoy that part of it. I still want to keep it to myself.

A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order.

All worthwhile writing... comes from an individual vision, privately pursued.

The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone.

I don't really think it comes as a shock to every writer if somebody in their family is mad at them. Yes, it's very upsetting. But it's inherent in the process of trying to make sense of one's life, which is what I think is perhaps at the bottom of writing at all.

I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.

Writers spend all their time preoccupied with just the things that their fellow men and women spend their time trying to avoid thinking about. ... It takes great courage to look where you have to look, which is in yourself, in your experience, in your relationship with fellow beings, your relationship to the earth, to the spirit or to the first cause—to look at them and make something of them.

I can't remember why or how I started writing, but I think it was always a way of making sense of the world.

I've always used poetry to explain myself to myself. These things just sat in my psyche and then came out.

I want to get within myself and write. I really, really want to write.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It's a parallel thing in me.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

In high school, I went to a place called the Mountain School. It's on a farm in Vermont, and I read Emerson and Thoreau and ran around the woods. Now I go hiking with a bunch of my comedy buddies. We talk about our emotions. I also do a lot of writing on hikes, just to get the blood flowing and the ideas moving.

Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.

I don't know why I write what I write.

Filmmaking is incredible introspective. It forces you to sort of examine yourself in new ways.

Why my interest in writers? Well, I'm one, and many of my friends are writers. I know what it's like to write. I'm interested in the creative process. I'm fascinated by the disparity between who we are on the outside, and what we have bubbling away inside us.