Roxane Gay Quotes

I have notebooks all over the place. I write little stories for my cabaret.

Personally there is first: imagination; second: the act of writing - and third: the act/act of vocalizing.

The great thing about writing is, if you don't like the world, we'll create a different one.

Writing stories is a kind of magic, too.

I write. I imagine. The act of imagining in itself enlivens me. I am not frozen and paralyzed before the predator. I invent characters. At times I feel as if I am digging up people from the ice in which reality enshrouded them, but maybe, more than anything else, it is myself that I am now digging up.

A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order.

A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.

You don't have to be as good a writer to write a song; it's a very different process to writing straight prose. To learn how to write prose takes a lot of years of practice.

I might write four lines or I might write twenty. I subtract and I add until I really hit something I want to do. You don't always whittle down, sometimes you whittle up.

If you just write the kinds of stories you think others will want to read, you'll be competing with cartoonists who are far more enthusiastic for that kind of comic than you are, and they'll kick your ass every time.

I love writing, but I stopped because I felt I was more effective approaching filmmaking from a different vantage point.

It takes a lot of energy and a lot of neurosis to write a novel. If you were really sensible, you'd do something else.

I love writing. I've pursued it with a passion.

Writing is as big a part of my career as acting is, financially and time wise. So, yeah, I love it. That's all I wanted to do since I was young was be a writer. So that and acting are the two most important aspects of my career.

Writing for me is quite a plastic form, a kind of mental sculpture, although that sounds weird. It acquires its character and its depth as it goes along.

I enjoy writing. I enjoy that kind of process.

I enjoy adapting my own work, or anybody's work. I like to adapt books.

Being a writer is not the point. Writing is.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

Each new book is a tremendous challenge.

Writing is what I do. It's what makes me tick.

Most every book I bring into the world is like birthing a baby; it's a lot of effort!

When I want to read a novel, I write one.

I love writing, and I love making arts programmes.

If I have a long period of time away from acting, I tend to write.