David Rakoff Quotes

Whatever it is that I thirst for in my current project tends to turn up in my following project.

The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.

Throughout my life, there's just periods when I write and periods when I don't. I don't feel like anything's really blocked. It's just not where things are at right now, and it's just a matter of time until there's something going on where I feel compelled to write.

I've always felt that there's a point where a piece seems to be alive, that is, living. And that's the point where I know the composition is finished.

Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work.

The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.

When I am composing, I try to clear my mind of having to publish, or having to sell a book or find readers. That kind of thinking gets in the way.

The little dissatisfaction which every artist feels at the completion of a work forms the germ of a new work.

If you want to know why all writers are a little crazy read 'The Midnight Disease' by Alice W. Flaherty. She talks about the drive to write, writer's block, and the creative brain. I know what's wrong with me!

I'm not very prolific. I'm not good at sitting down as an artist and saying 'Okay, I need to put in my four hours today.'

A lot of my writer friends - some of whom are brilliant - work when the Muse calls them, for lack of a better description. You know, days of nothing, then this creative burst where they write for 36 hours straight fueled by caffeine and idealism.

Any working composer or painter or sculptor will tell you that inspiration comes at the eighth hour of labour rather than as a bolt out of the blue. We have to get our vanities and our preconceptions out of the way and do the work in the time allotted.

Most of the time one is discouraged by the work, but now and again by some grace something stands out and invites you to work on it, to elaborate it or animate it in some way. It's a mysterious process.

There's no writer's block; there's only distraction.

Even if you're not releasing songs, the act of creativity is important. That's the part I love, when you're in the moment. The rest of it I'm not particularly interested in at all.

Most creative people fall into one of two categories - either they're task-oriented, or they're time-oriented.

As a composer, every project begins with either a blank sequence or a blank manuscript and for the first couple of days you cover and experience every emotion under the sun. Fear being the main one.

I've never had a block. I'm talking within the limits of my abilities. But in my own small way, I've had an embarrassment of riches. I'll have five ideas and I'm dying to do them all. It takes weeks or months where I agonize and obsess over which to do next. I wish sometimes someone would choose for me. If someone said, Do idea number three next, that would be fine. But I have never had any sense of running dry.

I know how demanding the process of creation is.

After it's finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration.

I have my permanent muses and my muses of the moment.

Very rarely is there any confusion as to when a painting or a song is finished. You just know when it's done.

My process is messy and non-linear, full of false starts, fidgets, and errands that I suddenly need to run now; it is a battle to get something - anything - down on paper. I doodle in sketchbooks: bits of ideas, fragments of sentences, character names, single lines of dialogue with no context.

Everybody knows that I don't have a muse. I'm not interested in that.

Writing is a funny thing. It's not like you're working on a schedule. It comes in fits and starts.