Garrison Keillor Quotes

No, I'm a quite big believer in not being in the studio if I don't feel like being in there.

Ultimately, you have to write what's coming at any given point in time. Fighting your instincts for practical reasons is a losing battle.

I make time to write.

I'll have periods when I write and periods when I don't. But you don't want it to become a discipline, really. If it becomes a discipline, it becomes a chore, and that's no good. To make art you need to be inspired.

I don't write on demand - I wait for inspiration to come.

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?

The muse holds no appointments. You can never call on it. I don't understand people who get up at 9 o'clock in the morning, put on the coffee and sit down to write.

I've had to really teach myself that when you're not feeling it, you shouldn't write anything down because you're going to end up coming back and re-writing it later. Whereas, if you write when you're feeling something, when you're really in the streak, then that's when you're going to get your best stuff.

It's okay to not be working all the time and to be gentle on yourself when you're not. When it feels like you're losing that inspiration - or you're in a rut, not making stuff, and your head gets all weird - be gentle on yourself. Just ease into things naturally. But you still have to ease into it: you still have to sit in the chair.

I don't want to write because I have to; I want to write because I want to. Sometimes, when writers write because they have to, the results are disastrous.

The joy for me as a writer is that, despite the fact I spend most of my life on my own in a room eating too much chocolate and drinking too much tea, eventually they let me out into the world.

When I get inspired, I give out free music. If you look at my track record from the beginning, that's always what I've done. I've never changed.

Sometimes you can't write a novel for weeks and weeks, but it's good for your self-esteem to work on something else.

Certain personal issues forced me stay away from movies for a while but that does not mean I was idle and cut away from cinema. It was during that break that I wrote two books and found the time to dream about new scripts and plots.

I used to think there was something dirty about being paid for something which is a sacred thing to do. I can't disconnect the act of writing music from the act of prayer. If anyone tries to stop me working, it feels like someone is trying to stop me from taking communion.

What I've learned and all of us have learned is: You can't force art, and there's no way you could force somebody to do something that they didn't want to do in this line of work.

If you make music with business in your head, it'll show. I make it from the heart. There's a difference.

You can't be 'on' everyday, no one is a hit machine all the time. But if you're loving the music it will happen. It shouldn't be laborious.

Boxing has definitely allowed me to focus on something other than just creating content which I think we've seen historically can be so toxic.

I wouldn't disrespect myself or my art with any imitations.

I don't get competitive, really. So I don't know. If I'm excited about something, hopefully someone will think, "Oh right, you should do this." And that's great. I'm not being very articulate about this. I just don't want to do stuff if I'm going to feel bummed out and uninspired.

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. Only if you do that can you hope to make the reader feel every particle of what you, the writer, have known and feel compelled to share."---Forward to Kafka's Short stories

To be an artist is a blessing and a privilege. Artists must never betray their true hearts. Artists must look beneath the surface and show that there is more to this world than what meets the eye.

I think it's really important to not talk about how you're going to release something until you've finished it. People are like, "What are we going to make? What are we going to do with it?" and it's just like, "I don't know, we're just making music. Then we'll talk." You can't always write something you're happy with; you can't force it.

Never strive, O artist, to create what you are not irresistibly impelled to create!