Marian Keyes Quotes

I prefer to write first drafts as soon as possible after waking, so that the oneiric inscape is still present to me.

My creative process is quite slow. I hear melodies in my head while I'm washing the dishes and I allow my subconscious to do the work.

After it's finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration.

My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.

My best writing is often early in the morning and, sometimes, while working out.

When I sit down to make music, I try to enter a flow; I always open a blank session and just make something that I feel like making. Only after a piece of music is done does my frontal cortex allow me to organize what might be trying to come out of my subconscious.

You don't make a movie, the movie makes you.

When I am composing, I try to clear my mind of having to publish, or having to sell a book or find readers. That kind of thinking gets in the way.

Sometimes I feel as if sections of my ballets were done for me - that I didn't do them myself.

None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.

Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.

I am a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast - talk them or write them down.

The writing is the springboard for your intuitive stuff and then you see, maybe a colour of what you want to achieve. Then you bring in the technique you've learnt. But when you're on film, you're not always in control of that. That's what makes me believe in a kind of collective unconscious, a sort of experience you draw on.

I'm not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work.

Ultimately, at the end of it, it's just trying to get into that space where you feel like you're hitting the right thing and you're making music. And it feels intuitive rather than being counterintuitive.

And I don't have any specific steps to take because I don't start the same way every time. But there is a knowing when it's enough and you can leave it alone.

When I write a poem, I go into a state of self-forgetfulness, and something higher takes over; I like to call it my best self.

Writing and creating, those things come to me on their own. I feel like... you sort of summon them and it's like allowing the universe to enter your heart in an entirely different way to what it normally does. It's like inviting that energy of the universe to enter into your craft in a way where it has a meaning.

When I'm writing, I'm trying to access my subconscious and turn off my conscious brain. I use my conscious for research, but when I'm actually writing, I'm trying to get into a place where I'm tapping into the deeper, darker elements of what's going on.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

The half hour between waking and rising has all my life proved propitious to any task which was exercising my invention... It was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me.

I discovered Einstein said the same thing about his celebrated theories of relativity that writers say about their work when he said he didn't have any feelings of personal possession of these ideas. Once they were out there, they came from somewhere else. And that's exactly the feeling when you write. You don't feel possessive about it.

Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture.