John McGahern Quotes

I write fast, because I have not the brains to write slow.

I'm trying to learn how to write faster.

I write quickly with a sense of urgency. I don't edit myself out of existence, meaning I'll try to write 50 or 60 pages before I start rereading, revising and editing. That just helps with my confidence.

Now, as I've gotten older I've been able to write more quickly. Sometimes I get in the space of something and I can do a lot in a day.

As soon as I began, it seemed impossible to write fast enough - I wrote faster than I would write a letter - two thousand to three thousand words in a morning, and I cannot help it.

Nobody believes this, but I write very fast.

He puts his right hand lightly on the cup, I put my left, leaving the right free to transcribe, and away we go. We get, oh, 500 to 600 words an hour. Better than gasoline.

Everybody has a cartoon of themselves. Mine is: I write very fast, and I'm ruthlessly efficient with my time.

The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.

As soon as I began, it seemed impossible to write fast enough – I wrote faster than I would write a letter – two thousand to three thousand words in a morning, and I cannot help it.

The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are.

There is no pleasure in the world like writing well and going fast.

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.

I write pretty fast, probably faster than most people. But I might think about something for six hours, then write it in 20 minutes. So did I write for six hours and 20 minutes, or just 20 minutes? I used to write absolutely every day, except for days when I had to travel or something.

Basically it takes me very little time to write a song. If I find myself taking more than an hour to do it I usually forget it, and try something else. I like to work quickly; I never like to waste any time. I never write half a song and come back to it later at all. It all has to be done at once. I lose interest if it doesn't.

I can write faster on a typewriter than you can on a computer. I do 120 words a minute, and you can't do that on a computer.

I like to work fast and I like to work intensively.

Writing responds well to some gentle scheduling. A day job not only promotes solvency, it promotes creativity as well.

You’d better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time You turn around. I know what I’m talking about. You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze In this goddam phenomenal world.

Sneaking up on it sometimes helps: I've found I can be very productive for an hour before dinner, because there obviously isn't enough time to really do anything, so I can tell myself I'm just screwing around.

Nothing can be done well at a speed of forty miles a day. The multitude of mixed, novel impressions rapidly piled on one another make only a dreamy, bewildering, swirling blur, most of which is unrememberable.

Some people will tell you that slow is good - but I'm here to tell you that fast is better.

Right now I feel so inspired, it's hard to believe. I've written about 20 songs in the last two days. I'd gone about four months without writing a thing.

Three months seems to me quite a reasonable time to complete a book, if one can get right down to it.

For me, the process always has to be pretty intense. I could never write just two or three days a week. It had to be every day.