John Darnielle Quotes

Writers do not write what they know. They write what they can imagine.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It's a story.

Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.

This afternoon, burn down the house. Tomorrow, pour critical water upon the simmering coals. Time enough to think and cut and rewrite tomorrow. But today-explode-f ly-apart-disint egrate! The other six or seven drafts are going to be pure torture. So why not enjoy the first draft, in the hope that your joy will seek and find others in the world who, by reading your story, will catch fire, too?

Making up characters and places and plots, unlike fixing your plumbing or doing dishes, is anything but practical or rational. I write what needs to be written the way that seems genuinely right.

It's a delicious thing to write. To be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating.

There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.

Blank paper has always inspired me.

When I write a story, I have no idea what I'm doing. All I know is that I want to share something with my readers. The whole idea of writing is this place where you lose control, where you're irresponsible - it's a very liberating place.

Writers can take offense when someone asks what's real or autobiographical in our work because, to us, that's not what counts. The bits taken from life are tiny scales on the dragon's tail - what about that whole beautiful writhing, fire-breathing dragon?

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.

All stories come from the subconscious - which is why it doesn't make sense to over-plan.

My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head.

I try and make little stories. Whether it's with a pencil or with bits of records, it's really the same thing.

I don't outline; I listen to a kind of whisper inside the material.

What I do is write, and I try to write as closely as I can into what I call 'the mystery.'

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.

When I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I'm trying to do. I'm frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper.

In my head, at least, the business of spinning stories has no closing time. Twists in my characters' lives, glimpses of their secrets, obstacles to their dreams... all arrive unbidden when I'm getting cash at the ATM, walking my son to camp, singing a hymn at a wedding.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

Part of a writer's job is just spacing out, looking into the air and imagining things.

If one day a TV series comes into my head, and that is what I want to write, I'll write it. It just depends what story is in my brain at the time.

I get to do what I love every day. I get to crawl into someone else's head and I love that.

When I sit down to write, I consider myself an artist.

You are always drawing from your personal life and using your imagination to fill in the blanks.