Andy Milonakis Quotes

Obsession remains the price of creation, and the writer who declines that risk will come up with nothing more creative than 'The Foxes of Harrow' or 'Mrs. Parkington.'

To survive, each sentence must have, at its heart, a little spark of fire, and this, whatever the risk, the novelist must pluck with his own hands from the blaze.

I'm an artist, and I like the risk - I'm not in it for the sure things.

Choosing writing as a career, just by itself, is a measure of not being a calculating person.

You can't be a playwright without believing there's an audience for adventurous work.

You can't really go into TV thinking, 'Maybe I can make a few bucks doing this thing I'm only kind of interested in to support my one true love, which is prose fiction.' I think you have to love what you're doing to do it well.

There's no safety in anything, but in the arts, there is really this idea of no promises. I didn't follow the writing dream for safety.

People who paint, including myself, get to a point where a bit of angst comes in. If you're doing it for a living, it's worth it to suffer those slings and arrows.

I tried to write a TV series, and then I discovered first of all that I love writing more than anything on this earth, and that you could write exactly as well as you want to.

Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.

Pain s the truth of art. Art is not a hobby or a pastime. It is the result of an internal battle royal, one between the quest for safety and the desire to matter.

I was a playwright who was still learning the ropes when Starz took a chance on me to create and showrun 'Vida.' They nurtured and supported me during every step of the strenuous process, and that is a debt that cannot be repaid.

The art of writing fiction is to sail as dangerously close to the truth as possible without sinking the ship

I think to write fiction, this is just how I see it, you have to have a powerful need/desire to connect. I can't. Wanting to and not being able to has lead to a lot of misery in my life.

It's always nice to have people love the things that you do. But it's a lot of hard work, and people are always passionate, if it's family fare or a drama, it's the same amount of work and people invest everything into that, and when it doesn't come out the way you want it to, of course it's hurtful.

The hardest piece of nonfiction I ever wrote isn't anywhere close to the easiest piece of fiction I never wrote.

I have never, God or whatever knows, prostrated myself to be famous, but I would meander through all the sewers of the world, through all degradations and humiliations, in order to paint. I have to do this. Until the last drop every vision that exists in my being must be purged; then it will be a pleasure for me to be rid of this damned torture

I know I'll keep writing poems. That's the constant. I don't know about novels. They're hard. It takes so much concentrated effort. When I'm writing a novel it's pretty much all I can do. I get bored. It takes months. Movies do the same thing. It's all-encompassing. It feels like I'm going to end up writing poems, short stories and screenplays.

I'm doing one of three things: I'm writing. I'm staring out the window. Or I'm writhing on the floor.

The danger with success in television is "Haven't we shot this episode before? Didn't we shoot this scene two years ago?" I think it's really hard to just take the risk from season to season and not be afraid to give the audience something completely different, and trust that they'll come with you.

To be a poet is to have an appetite for a certain anxiety which, when tasted among the swirling sum of things existent or forfeit, causes, as the taste dies, joy.

The joy of art is particularly sweet, though, because it carries with it the threat of rejection, of failure, and of missed connections. It's precisely the high-wire act of "this might not work" that makes original art worth doing.

I don't believe the writer should know too much where he's going. If he does, he runs into old man blueprint—old man propaganda.

If there was no risk, it wouldn't be art. It wouldn't be worth making. There is risk even in a fairy tale. Fiction is closest to pure narrative, and pure narrative is simply the logic we try to impose on an ever-changing reality.

Herman Melville said that artists have to take a dive and either you hit your head on a rock and you split your skull and you die … or that blow to the head is so inspiring that you come back and do the best work that you ever did. BUT you have to take the dive and you do not know what the results will be.