Angela Carter Quotes

It is no use thinking that writing of poems - the actual writing - can accommodate itself to a social setting, even the most sympathetic social setting of a workshop composed of friends. It cannot. The work improves there and often the will to work gets valuable nourishment and ideas. But, for good reasons, the poem requires of the writer not society or instruction, but a patch of profound and unbroken solitude.

Writing is the most solitary of arts.

A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.

When I'm writing I just think there's only the page and me and nobody else.

Much like film, authors spend a fair amount of time alone in the creative process, tossing their work out into what can feel like an abyss, void of real people.

Painting is a lonely, mostly solitary act.

The further you go in writing the more alone you are.

I have no idea whether what I write will be of the remotest interest to anyone else. Some mornings when I read what I wrote the previous day I think it's fairly entertaining; other times I think it's pure rubbish. The main thing is not to take any notice, not to be elated or upset, just keep going.

If you want to be a writer, I have two pieces of advice. One is to be a reader. I think that's one of the most important parts of learning to write. The other piece of advice is 'Just do it!' Don't think about it, don't agonize, sit down and write.

Writing a book is a bit like going on location for a movie. You're absent from your life, your family, and your friends. You're psychologically gone, so you might as well be physically gone.

The solitude of writing is a solitude without which writing could not be produced, or would crumble, drained bloodless by the search for something else to write.

When I'm writing columns, it's - all I'm thinking about is jokes, joke, joke, joke, setup, punch line, joke, joke, joke. And I really don't care where it goes.

You have to remember that writing itself is so solitary. You start writing because you're lonely.

Isolation in creative work is an onerous thing. Better to have negative criticism than nothing at all.

Relative to the power that movie stars have, and producers and directors, I would say that even the most respected screenwriters have very little power in Hollywood. I don't think it's in the nature of the writer's profession to go after that power. Writers spend their time alone, hallucinating, writing, making these things up, while these other people are out schmoozing, making connections, meeting each other. They are trotting the corridors of power and making sure they've put their own imprints in it. And they're promoting themselves and their images, as they should.

It's a long way from not having enough serotonin to thinking the world is "stale, flat and unprofitable"; even further to writing a play about a man driven by that thought.

I believe - I know (there are not many things I should care to dogmatize about, on the subject of writing) that writers need solitude, and seek alienation of a kind every day of their working lives. (And remember, they are not even aware when and when not they are working.) ... The tension between standing apart and being fully involved; that is what makes a writer.

I always think about the books I'm doing in pretty much the same way. I'm simply trying to write that particular novel as well as that particular novel can be written. I want to listen to what it is telling me, trying to figure out what it wants to do as much as what I want to do with it. There's a negotiation that's constant and ongoing between me and the material I'm working with, because I'm trying to listen to it.

I think the first thing - if you want to be a writer - the first thing you need to do is write. Which sounds like an obvious piece of advice. But so many people have this feeling they want to be a writer and they love to read but they don't actually write very much. The main part of being a writer, though, is being profoundly alone for hours on end, uninterrupted by email or friends or children or romantic partners and really sinking into the work and writing. That's how I write. That's how writing gets done.

I think most writers have to have a practice of writing. For me it is very early in the morning. I try to make it a separate world from the rest of my life.

I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to write.

I think that all writers feel alienated. ... I know that I do. ... I still feel, as I think most creative people do, absolutely isolated.

Writing is a long and lonesome business; back of the problems in thought and composition hover always the awful questions: Is this the page that shows the empty shell? Is it here and now that they find me out?

The writing life is a secret life, wither we admit it or not.

The first few months of my life of every year are in total retreat. I don't see anybody except my husband and my dog, I don't talk to anybody, and I just write.