Rebecca Miller Quotes

Someday I would love to write about Vincent van Gogh - his paintings and letters continue to inspire me very much. But it remains hard to find the time and inner rest to write.

A famous writer who wants to continue writing has to be constantly defending himself against fame.

I remember Prince gave me a cassette of Purple Rain. It was like 20 minutes long and he asked me to write something on it. I tried for a month and then he came to L.A. I went to see him and said, "I can't do it. It's too perfect. It's like 'Stairway to Heaven.'" He said OK and then I go, "I can keep the cassette, right?" He said, "Of course and thank you for trying."

Naturally, you don't sit down in "white hot inspiration" and write with a burning flame in front of you. But since I knew I could never be happy being anything but a writer, and Mockingbird put itself together for me so accommodatingly, I kept at it because I knew it had to be my first novel, for better or for worse.

I couldn't imagine, and I don't say this with any pride, but I really couldn't imagine writing without a desperate deadline.

I don't want my children to be at a disadvantage, growing up in the limelight, because then they have to live up to an identity already cut out for them, relating all the time to being so-and-so's daughter or so-and-so's son.

A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to write!' Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way.

I always write my novels with music (I don't listened to the music seriously.) Music seems to encourage me.

One day I was speeding along at the typewriter, and my daughter - who was a child at the time - asked me, "Daddy, why are you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!

I think when you write, you should call it a "writing spree." I don't write every day, and I don't write regularly.

I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.

I seldom know what I'm going to write when I sit down. There isn't much agony and sweat of the human spirit involved in doing it. The writing's easy, it's the living that is sometimes difficult.

When I start writing songs, and they come easily, I'm always very suspicious. That usually means they're reminding me of something I've already done before. When the songs become unsettling, and I feel anxious about what I'm doing, that usually means it's going to be more interesting later on when we actually record the stuff.

I think that artists don't make art - the art makes itself through us. I'm not the doer. I'm just along for the ride. Acting really reminds me of that because I don't write the words; I don't make the decisions. That's the director. Narcissism is a tragic condition. It must be so miserable to live trapped in a reflection that only includes the smallest version of our identities. Our true identities should have no bounds and no limits.

I really enjoy English and poetry and writing classes. You do get writer's block when you're writing music, and having inspiration from other great writers is great. You have to look for inspiration because sometimes music isn't the only thing that you can look at.

I had a lot of great lakes of ignorance that I was up against, I would write what I knew in almost like islands that were rising up out of the oceans. Then I would take time off and read, sometimes for months, then I would write more of what I knew, and saw what I could see, as much as the story as I could see. And then at a certain point I had to write out what I thought was the plot because it was so hard to keep it all together in my head. And then I started to write in a more linear way.

Yes, I am one of those people who feels that most of my work is adaptation of one sort or another. For me, it's a way to jump-start the engine. For example, some people use the technique of basing a character on a friend. They start writing with his or her voice, then at a certain point, the character takes off on his or her own. It probably no longer resembles the model, but it helped the author to get going. I find that's true of form, too. For every play I've written, I know what play I was trying to imitate. That helps me get going.

Life is a cutup. And to pretend that you write or paint in a timeless vacuum is just simply . . . not . . . true, not in accord with the facts of human perception.

If I waited to be in the mood to write, I'd barely have a chapbook of material to my name. Who would ever be in the mood to write? Do marathon runners get in the mood to run? Do teachers wake up with the urge to lecture? I don't know, but I doubt it. My guess is that it's the very act that is generative. The doing of the thing that makes possible the desire for it.

I try when I'm writing to fill my head and my ears with all sorts of stuff and then let it settle and filter through. At a certain point it seems like fruitless activity because you're taking a lot of time and not seeming to get anything. And then, slowly, you realize you've actually digested elements and that your thinking is being freed up and the way you build up compositions is changed as a result of what you've been listening to.

I have some irrepressible pop impulses to write an appealing, concise song. And I also have some irrepressible kind of restlessness as well, and I need to keep myself interested. When I'm left to my own devices, there's a struggle.

I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

I never claimed to be a low-maintenance gal, but when I'm writing, it's particularly challenging. I lose things constantly: my watch, my glasses, my papers, my mind.

I started writing it, because it was seven years ago. But yes, that is the genesis of why I started writing.

I have so little control over the act of writing that it's all I can do to remain conscious.