Ira Glass Quotes

Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits.

I try to stay focused on my creativity.

Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.

There's nothing romantic about my work... I don't believe in inspiration. I believe that you get to your desk, you stay there, you work, you think of nothing else. You write and you write, and in the end, you write something good.

Every day I write. I am not waiting for a great idea from heaven.

I just write from dawn to dusk.

I am a person of high energy. That, and I sit down and I write when I get an idea - I put other things aside.

Write even when the world is chaotic. You don’t need a cigarette, silence, music, a comfortable chair, or inner peace to write. You just need ten minutes and a writing implement.

Never let anyone define what you are capable of by using parameters that don't apply to you. Inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just show up and get to work. Every great idea I've ever had grew out of work itself. Sign onto a process and see where it takes you. You don't have to invent the wheel everyday. Today you will do what you did yesterday, tomorrow you will do what you did today. Eventually, you will get somewhere.

Don't stop. Narrow your focus to one idea, and make it work. That will give birth to all of the others. All you can do is plant the seed and water it.

I wake up sometimes with an idea and then I write it down. It's not necessarily easy, but when you focus on something it comes.

I find that one of the most important things, as a writer, is to just show up - to just stay in the chair and fight through the difficult patches. As long as you're at the desk, and you're willing to fight it out, eventually the right words will come.

Art doesn't spring from the muses alone, but from hard work.

There's no secret, but inspiration has to find you working. And that's one of the key things that I've always remembered. And if I put my mind to it tonight, I think I could take a guitar, and by 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, something will have happened - I'll have had something to hang onto. But I think that's the key.

Sculpture is like farming. If you just keep at it, you can get quite a lot done.

I write every day... I never get ideas unless I'm actually writing. Ideas I get in the shower don't do me any good.

The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.

I write about two hours a day, and I write in fits and spurts - 45 minutes here, a half-hour there - and when I get stuck, which happens often, I take the dogs for a walk. But during the time when I'm not actually writing, I'm thinking.

Weirdly, often the more I write, the more ideas I have.

I often find that having an idea in my head prevents me from doing something else. Working is therefore a way of getting rid of an idea.

I want to spend my time between the creation of ideas and the creation of things.

When I wrote the opera, I made a deal with myself that for at least an hour a day I would work on it, even if it meant just sitting on my piano bench, staring into space and thinking about it. It's about keeping it regular, like your bowel movements - let's get real: it's your bodily artistic movements! It comes from the same place.

I've always prided myself on my discipline as a writer. I do it like a job. I get up in the morning and go to my desk.

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.