Albert Camus Quotes

Writers on the subject of August Strindberg have hitherto omitted to mention that he could not write. ... Strindberg, who was neither a good nor a wise man, had a stroke of luck. He went mad. He lost the power of inhibition. Everything down to the pettiest suspicion that the dog had been given the leanest mutton chop, poured out of his lips. Men of his weakness and sensuality are usually, from their sheer brutishness, unable to express themselves. But Strindberg was mad and articulate. That is what makes him immortal.

A writer writes with his genius; an artist paints with hers; everyone who creates operates from this sacramental center.

… there is a correlation between the creative and the screwball. So we must suffer the screwball gladly.

In order to be a living, breathing thing, a novel has to be failed in some kind of way. Or at least that's how I keep writing them.

Good taste cannot supply the place of genius in literature, for the best proof of taste, when there is no genius, would be, not to write at all.

Everybody is different. Some writers can write reams of great books and then J. D. Salinger wrote just a few. Beethoven wrote nine symphonies. They were all phenomenal. Mozart wrote some 40 symphonies, and they were all phenomenal. That doesn't mean Beethoven was a lesser writer, it's just some guys are capable of more productivity, some guys take more time.

Writers ... I think ... live on that fine line between insanity and genius.

Saying that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic worth, is like saying that he had rheumatism or suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical term that can claim no more notice from the objective critic than he grants the charge of heresy raised by the theologian, or the charge of immorality raised by the police.

I'll write, because I'll give - You critics means to live; For should I not supply - The cause, the effect would die

When I get an idea for a song it would gel in my mind for weeks or months, and then one day just like that, Ill write it.

When I'm writing I don't dream much; it's like the dreaming gets used in the writing.

It takes isolation and solitude for me to write.

No creative writer knows what is commercial and what isn't. You just write from your heart, you write from the deepest, creative urges in you, and you write from your soul, and you just either get lucky or not.

All the great things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they who have founded religions and created great works of art.

There are two types of genius; one which above all begets and wants to beget, and another which prefers being fertilized and giving birth.

Starting is hard so I really need to give myself permission to do a bad job. I always give myself leave to write total nonsense for as long as I need to release the pressure, because it's really hard to start if you feel like that first sentence you write has to actually mean something.

I get hundreds of emails daily and a lot of feedback from people that are reading or have read my books. When I'm writing, or in my daily life, I just think of the work. I love to tell a story, but I might work with a story to make it the best I can without thinking of how many people will read it or if it will influence anybody.

Having books published is very destructive to writing. It is even worse than making love too much. Because when you make love too much at least you get a damned clarte that is like no other light. A very clear and hollow light.

I think that perhaps if I had had to slow down the ideas so that I could capture them on paper I might have stifled some of them.

His [Michael Jackson] behavior was weird, but when you get an artist and a genius, many of the geniuses throughout our whole history were weird. And they did weird things because none of us could understand what was on their mind and why they did what they did.

The art is just really mysterious. If I understood it more, maybe I would write more.

Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.

As if a cookbook had anything to do with writing.

An artist needs a certain amount of turmoil and confusion.

Without craft, art remains private. Without art, craft is merely hackwork.