Gerald Vizenor Quotes

Thinking visually is my starting point, and then the writing happens.

If I don't see a music video to it while writing it, I just scrap it immediately. It's very visual.

I swim in a sea of words. They flow around me and through me and, by a process that is not fully clear to me, some delicate hidden membrane draws forth the stuff that is the necessary condition of my life.

I write my books in my head, and not in a specific study with a view. The view is from my inner eyes.

Like, even when I speak, I think I speak the same way I write. I kind of see it a certain way, and it leads me to write it exactly how I'm seeing it.

With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song.

Writers divide fairly cleanly into those who only work through what they hear and those who are more visual. I am the latter, where I lie down on my office floor and play scenes through my head to - cinematically, several times with different elements - to see what works. I can't write a scene until I can see it.

I have trouble writing if I can't picture how things are going to look.

I write on a visual canvas, 'seeing' a scene in my thoughts before translating it into language, so I'm a visual junkie.

When I write, I see the pages in my head, not the words.

I write really visually. In my head, I'm constantly picturing things as I'm writing, so for me, videos are such an expressive part of my job.

I try to imagine the scenes as I'm writing them as if I were watching them play like a film.

Color must be thought, imagined, dreamed.

If your way of life is writing, then everything that happens becomes a sentence.

When I write, I picture the characters a certain way in my head, and they're not like any actor or actress. It's almost hard for me to let go of my ideas as to the way they look.

A piece of writing is the product of a series of explosions in the mind.

To know how scientists engage in visual imagery is to understand how they think creatively.

A book, at the same time, also has to do with what I call a buzz in the head. It's a certain kind of music that I start hearing. It's the music of the language, but it's also the music of the story. I have to live with that music for a while before I can put any words on the page. I think that's because I have to get my body as much as my mind accustomed to the music of writing that particular book. It really is a mysterious feeling.

Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind.

Without images we can neither think nor understand anything.

The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.

Occasionally, I'll dream I'm in the factory. That will help me write. Not creatively, but more like a prod. I don't want to go back there.

Whenever I write a song I see the whole song anyway.

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.

Writing, even though it's hard work, is really a joy when you get these characters to come alive. It's hard to trace where they come from. I can't say that I am sitting here one night at nine o'clock and that a character occurs to me. The magic for me happens at the typewriter.