Iggy Pop Quotes

I need to write in a small room - the smaller the better. I can't write in a big room where someone might sneak up behind my back.

It is wonderful to be in the country in a glass house, because no matter what happens out there, you're nice and safe, you know, cuddled in your little bed, and there it is, raging storms, snowing - wonderful.

I have a very beautiful room that in my house that we bought in Princeton. It's glass on three sides, and you'd think that's the perfect place to write. Somehow in that nice room I feel too exposed, and I can notice I'm too distracted by things going on, so I end up writing in a not-very-nice office bedroom.

I like my surroundings to be pretty spare and severe. It helps me to concentrate on my work. All I ever do here is go from my studio to my bedroom. Everything else is extraneous. I never entertain, because to me, New York is about meeting people in public spaces, absorbing a little bit of their energy.

I could type in a closet and be fine. It's just a matter of cocooning myself. Just me and the story.

I stay home. It's the best place to be alone. There is hardly any walk-through traffic.

I live in solitude. I have need of solitude to do the next day's work. I can't be to parties where the noise tires me. I can't speak on the telephone. I must have complete calm.

When I'm sitting at my drafting table in my studio, I could really be anywhere.

Caffeine helps a lot. That and a certain amount of isolation.

There should be at least a room or some corner where no one will find you and disturb you or notice you.

My writing time needs to surround itself with empty stretches, or at least unpeopled ones, for the writing takes place in an area of suspension as in a hanging nest that is almost entirely encapsulated.

You can write anytime people will leave you alone and not interrupt you.

My house in Connecticut is very quiet, and when I'm trying to concentrate, I don't even allow the cat inside my second-floor study.

Twice a year, I take myself off to a self-imposed 'writer's retreat', staying at a small inn or on a friend's farm, where I am all alone and do nothing other than write.

Unfortunately, poetry is not born in noise, in crowds, or on a bus. There have to be four walls and the certainty that the telephone will not ring. That's what writing is all about.

I like the cold weather. It means you get work done.

I need complete silence when I write.

One constant writing ritual, no matter what I'm writing, is that I cannot write if people are around me. It wigs me out - the idea that someone is reading as I'm writing stuff.

Some writers like to work in other places like coffee shops, but I can't - I'd end up people-watching. And if I were at a bookstore, I'd be reading. Sometimes I have some music on, but usually I like it quiet.

I don't mind staying in one place for a while - I like to spend a lot of time in Los Angeles. It's a place where nobody goes out, where people will leave you alone. People in Los Angeles love themselves and they love what they do and they leave you alone. If you're isolated, you have a real advantage. You can work.

Composing demands a degree of isolation.

I can't write if someone else is in the house, not even the cleaning woman.

Although I've made notes for things and even written synopses sitting in trains or on park benches, for the complete composition of things I need absolute solitude, preferably an empty house.

I need quiet and solitude to work. Darkness is best. If I am wide awake, I can't write.

If I could go upstairs and write every day, I would be happy. I don't need recreation.