Jonathan Galassi Quotes

The secret is to write just anything, to dare to write just anything, because when you write just anything, you begin to say what is important.

I want to write from my own experience.

In every novel, I write about something - a place, an experience, an emotion - with which I'm intimately familiar, but it's also crucial to me that I take on challenges. If write only inside my comfort zone, I'll suffocate.

Remember to write for yourself, not for a market and give yourself time to develop your own style, your own voice. It takes a lifetime. Enjoy it!

There have been times when I'm writing about things that are personally embarrassing. Like any human being, sometimes I can't help but wonder - 'What are the people I know going to think about this?' So I have to remind myself that all is permissible. Art has to be a free space. Language has to be a free space.

My main piece of advice would be don't worry about being published - just write a really good book, but also don't be afraid to write a bad book. Give yourself permission to fail, and don't be afraid.

I don't mind finding these ugly sides to my personality and exaggerating them because that's something you can write towards.

Nobody can tell you you're wrong for writing a song about how you feel - even if you don't really feel that way.

Early on my career, I figured out that I just have to write the book I have to write at that moment. Whatever else is going on in the culture is just not that important. If you could get the culture to write your book, that would be great. But the culture can't write your book.

When you start writing about the stuff that is the central experience of your own life, you can talk about whatever you want, in whatever way you want.

I'm a firm believer in putting your experiences in your writing, of bleeding into the page.

All you need to do is write truly and not care about what the fate of it is.

I don't think homosexuality is a choice. Society forces you to think it's a choice, but in fact, it's in one's nature. The choice is whether one expresses one's nature truthfully or spends the rest of one's life lying about it.

You don't have to always write about big stuff. Writing is about expressing yourself, you know? It can be about small stuff, too.

I write about what I'm going through.

I've never tried to be anything but me. Even with Slipknot, where it can almost feel like a roll sometimes, it's still a part of who I am. It's a very strong and passionate part of who I am, and I'm lucky enough to have an audience that is really open to what I do.

I just write songs from the heart, and you never know who'll like the songs. I try to make sure that I don't allow anybody's expectation to weigh on me. I have my own expectation of life. I believe in letting people be free.

Now, as a writer, the whole world is your nail polish display, and what's more, you can help yourself. A thrilling, colourful array of gorgeous human peculiarity revolves before your eyes, and you still can't quite believe it's all yours for the taking.

Playing is just about feeling. Playing isn't necessarily about misery. Playing isn't necessarily about happiness. But it's just about letting yourself feel all those things that you have already on the inside of you, but you're all the time trying to push them aside because they don't make for polite conversation or something.

That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader.

I have always written from a personal place.

When I write a song with somebody else in mind, it's putting the cart before the horse. The way I write best is when I allow the song to tell me what it wants to be.

The biggest thing that I hope people take away when they listen to my music is that they feel that there is an outlet being presented that allows them to be more authentic and for them to be more honest in their own lives.

A lot of what I write is very personal.

Sometimes I'm just like, 'I cannot hold onto this anymore,' and it's time to say something. And at the end of the day, I've just got to let it go and be true to myself. Whatever comes out comes out.