Mary Kay Andrews Quotes

In my mind, I'm doing everything, but in reality, I'm doing very, very little. You come up with one idea, one moment, one line that leads to something and you feel like it's easy. And then, you sit back and think there would be no show without that.

An author who waits for the right 'mood' will soon find that 'moods' get fewer and fewer until they cease altogether.

If a writer stops observing, he is finished.

writers just kept on staring at nothing until they wrote something. Might be two minutes or two weeks.

Writing is very good for household tasks. Because you'd rather fix a dripping tap or paint an old wall - you'd rather do almost anything than sit and write. I have to reach a point of obsession in order to write, and so I find starting a book incredibly difficult.

Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

A piece of fabric can get me going.

I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block.

It's weird, because I don't feel prolific. I don't write anything for months at a time.

A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.

I try to think of it not as writer's block, but a time where you just need to live life and experience things so you have something to write about.

I write early in the morning. I just wake up whenever I feel awake and I have to be sitting and writing pretty soon after that. If I take too long to think about the impossibility of what I'm trying to, I'll be defeated by it.

I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry.

When I was in art college, I would be painting, and I would create something on a canvas that was actually quite attractive. But if I got frightened and tried to protect that, that canvas would die.

If I don't have a model in front of me, I don't have an idea.

I can only speak for myself - there were times when I just wasn't inspired by creating music.

Writing, for me, is very inspiration-dependent. And inspiration can be a jerk.

I did plays in college, and I have half of a play. But I'm kind of stuck. I keep revisiting it so maybe it will move somewhere. There's something about plays where you can feel that sense of artifice at any moment.

The day I run out of ideas is the day I stop making records.

I have no discipline, which is a horrible flaw for any writer. Once I'm well started on a project, though, then I'm addicted to it all day long. When it's done, I collapse and have to really kick myself to start a new one.

I don't know what the creative process is. I don't know how to trick it into starting or how to egg it on.

The hardest part about writing any song is, what do you write? And how do I rewrite things? You start to run out of ideas that feel fresh.

In a way, I started 'Goon Squad' not even realizing I was writing a book. I thought I was just writing a few stories to stall before starting this other book that I wanted to write - or thought I wanted to write: I still haven't written it.