J. M. G. Le Clezio Quotes

When you sit at your desk, if you're lucky, there's a moment when you feel empowered to be someone or something else, to leap into another skin.

I've been a traveller, but I don't travel so much now. I'm trying to do it vicariously through my writing. I'm trying to write books that will draw readers away from their lives but send them back in a more awakened way.

Writing will be like a journey, every word a footstep that takes me further into undiscovered land.

I always felt that acting was an escape, like having the secret key to every door and permission to go into any realm and soak it up. I enjoy that free pass.

I don't much enjoy travelling, but I have always longed to take a slow train to Russia. I'd like to go alone - like writers do - with only a pencil and piece of paper as company. I'd take my sketchbook and note down all the wonderful details of other travellers.

I can write most places. I particularly like writing on trains. Being between places is quite liberating, and looking out of the window, watching a procession of landscapes and random-ish objects, is very good for stories.

When I'm in a place like Iceland, I allow myself to take a little more time to divert off onto other paths creatively for a while and see what comes to me.

I really enjoy writing novels. It's like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off.

On any given day, if I play the guitar, I can put myself somewhere. I always thought, 'This is the way you go.' It's like a magic carpet, see?

I want to be inspired when I'm working, and for that, I can go wherever it takes me.

Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write about others.

Dig into life with wild roving abandon, opening your mind to the delicious possibilities that perplex the mind, entice the heart, and excite the spirit.

'Birdman' came from a very beautiful side of me, from a part of honesty and surrender about things.

Dare to err and to dream. Deep meaning often lies in childish plays.

Ideas come from ordinary, everyday life. And from imagination. And from feelings. And from memories. Memories of dust in my sneakers and humming whitewalls down a hill called Monkey.

You have to free your mind to do things you wouldn't think of doing. Don't ever say no.

Sendak's 1963 classic 'Where The Wild Things Are' has long been a favorite of mine because of the creative imagery, fantastic adventures and, most of all, because of how this timeless story shows us that children need to be free to roam, explore and invent in order to understand their place in the world that surrounds them.

I get so much inspiration from my travels, but I also started an exercise where I write down so many words every week. Then I begin crossing them off. We create a grid of words and also images, but words for me are more ample because you can interpret them your own way.

I want to liberate my imagination and my mind with every kind of movie. That is what I wanted to do all my life.

When I try to write I try to write something different every time. That's the challenge.

Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been.

We can escape the commonplace only by manipulating it, controlling it, thrusting it into our dreams or surrendering it to the free play of our subjectivity.

I developed this fantasy world. I found that that was much more fun and more interesting and exciting than real life was to me. Then, once I got the guitar going when I was a teenager, I set sail for the direction I've been in my whole life.

Australians don't have a preconceived notion of what things have to be... we can go on a fantastic journey.

To be able to pretend to be something that I'm frankly not is very liberating and exciting.