Richard Flanagan Quotes

I've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.

You can't ever create defensively. You just have to create the next thing that really speaks to you.

Creativity doesn't follow titles. It just comes from where it comes from.

I can't tell you why I choose stuff, it's really something I don't analyse. The only thing I can say is that a film has to demand to be made, I don't have a plan of what films I'm going to make. The only thing that I know now is that I'm not too crazy about doing things again that I've been into before.

Most songs I write are spur-of-the-moment-type things. I have to be spontaneous. If not, songwriting can bore me. There is no pre-design or idea of what I am going to do when I go into the studio. It's all like that for me. I could go in and write two or three songs in an eight-hour session. You can't over-think songs. You just can't.

I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote 'Search.' There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove.

I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

My best stories come out of nowhere, with no concern for form at all.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

In fiction, you have a rough idea what's coming up next - sometimes you even make a little outline - but in fact you don't know. Each day is a whole new - and for me, a very invigorating - experience.

I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants.

You never know what an artist is going to create next.

When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

No dance has ever turned out the way I thought it would, because I trust enough that I can start something with some ideas and then it takes itself somewhere.

The creative processes are so mysterious.

I never really tell anyone what I'm writing beforehand because I usually don't know what it will be.

It's tough to know what I'm going to write about. I never really know until it starts happening.

My publishers find me really challenging, as a lot of the time, I don't even know what I'm going to be writing about until I sit down to do it.

The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

Real greatness comes from that sort of spontaneity of the moment that takes it into another level. That can never be planned; it happens or it doesn't. And you can't force it.

If a piece of genius comes, it comes, and it if doesn't, it doesn't.

One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite different.

I never really know what I'm going to write next until it comes to me. So we'll just have to see what happens.