Chang-Rae Lee Quotes

I never listen to music when I'm writing.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

Sometimes I write with music on, and if I'm in a good flow, I don't even hear it.

I rarely listen to music while writing. If I don't like it, it bothers me, and if I like it, it absorbs me so much I can't write.

I don't listen to music when I write. I need silence so I can hear the sound of the words.

Music has a tremendous effect on me. When it's playing, I can't think or do anything other than listen. But I can write to it.

Music inspires me and puts me in the right mood, but to actually listen to it when I write - I find it gets in the way.

I don't listen to music when I write - I find it distracting.

When I'm writing, I like to seal everything off and face the wall, not to look outside the window. The only way out is through the sentences.

It makes it harder to write if I watch a lot of television, because television is not like a written story.

I always write with music. It takes me a while to figure out the right piece of music for what I'm working on. Once I figure it out, that's the only thing I'll play.

I don't like to read contemporary fiction while writing - I need a sense of isolation, a kind of silence, and I don't want a jumble of other people's voices or visions getting in my way. Nineteenth-century voices don't create static in that silence.

I rarely listen to music while writing. I wish I could, but it distracts me.

I can't speak in too much detail about a book or story I'm working on because I find that it takes the energy out of my writing. When I begin to work, it's like a soda bottle that's been jostled before it's opened. There's a lot of pent up energy in there. I have to let it out slowly, carefully, so that I can turn it into a written work.

While in the middle of writing a book, I have a hard time reading other books for pleasure.

The space where writing happens is a unique space that's hard to define, and when you're kicked out of it because you're travelling or distracted, it seems so elusive and hard to defend because you yourself doubt whether it existed.

I have to write because if I don't get something down then after a while I feel it's going to bang the side of my head off.

My mind wanders terribly. I'm not wholly annoyed by my daydreaming as it has been immense use to me as regards imaginative thought, but it doesn't help when it comes to concentration. And writing needs concentration - lots of it.

I tend to write better when I'm not touring.

I don't generally listen to music while working, but sometimes music can help me get past minor writer's block.

Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.

When it comes time to write the book itself I'll shut the lights out, picture the scene I'm about to write then close my eyes and go at it. Yes, I can touch type.

I think you get so wrapped up in the book you're currently writing, it's hard to think about anything else. But I know as soon as I'm done with this book, I'll move on to something else.

You know how sometimes you hear a chord played on an organ and you can feel it vibrating in your bones? Sometimes when I'm writing, I can feel my bones vibrating because I'll have a thought or I'll have a character's voice in my head, and that's when I know I'm on the right track.

Writing sessions can last an hour or sixteen hours, depending on how it's going.