Amy Ray Quotes

All stories come from the subconscious - which is why it doesn't make sense to over-plan.

For the most part I write very stream of consciousness. I basically need to be recording an entire writing session because it's almost like I black out and just start singing whatever is on my mind and forget it as soon as I stop.

The mind is a vagrant thing.... Thinking is not analogous to a person working in a laboratory who invents something on company time.

You sit and you let your fingers go to wherever they are going to go. You wait until you start to hear something, and you start to figure out what it is that you're doing. And then you add another piece next to that piece, and wait to see if some kind of pattern or something interesting starts to grow, and then you cultivate it.

Allen Ginsburg was wrong about a lot of things, but especially when he said, 'First thought, best thought.'

I'm not afraid of just cranking it out and seeing what comes out of my subconscious. Because I don't always know what I'm feeling. I do a lot of rewriting later. But that first blast feels like a spigot - like it's coming from somewhere else.

Story ideas, but it's also musing on stuff that I'm thinking about. This leads me to this and this leads me to this. They're kind of random and haphazard. Often I can't find anything. Somehow, by doing that, even though I don't necessarily refer to them in a specific way, I have some sort of architecture in my head.

It's kind of amazing; I don't know anything. It's an interesting way to work where you're living in the moment and making decisions for your character in the moment. You have to go with your gut on everything - try not to over-think things. That tends to make me doubt what I did, but then that's always the case. I'm a worrier. I have to accept that and just be a worrier.

It took time to learn that the hard thing about writing is to let the story write itself, while one sits at the typewriter and does as little thinking as possible. It happened over and over again, and the beginner learned - when you start puzzling over an idea, and slowing down on the keys, the writing gets worse and worse.

That impulse I think is a form of love. Poetry is something that comes to you, rather than your having to work out its form beforehand.

I didn't even know what I did in 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape'. I just went off with whatever I felt instinctually without a second thought.

Don't think. Get out of your head. Stop planning and just go.

That's what improvising is like for me. There's no tollbooth between my impulse and my action.

When I write a story, it's not like I'm thinking about what I'm doing

When I start thinking, all is lost.

I never think of the completed film, rather the adventure of what I'm about to live.

Every movie I've ever made has just kind of come together.

If you think about it enough to have a really articulate answer, you're not doing it right. That's how I feel about art. If your thought process could take you to knowing exactly what you're doing and why, there would be no point in making the art. It would become like propaganda. It's more nebulous than that.

I think it's really important to not talk about how you're going to release something until you've finished it. People are like, "What are we going to make? What are we going to do with it?" and it's just like, "I don't know, we're just making music. Then we'll talk." You can't always write something you're happy with; you can't force it.

I don't really ever think in terms of what type of person I'd love to play. I usually just read stuff and can tell.

I don't type [when I write] because . . . I often have the feeling that everything flows directly from my right hand.

I have a vision for everything that I make, but... I'm not that considerate about what I do. I do whatever is in my head and how it ends up tends to be the thing that it's supposed to be. It was never a premeditated decision.

[I write] intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a steep mountain slope with no time to think.

It sounds like I'm channeling or something, and I don't really fully understand what it is. I'll get a piece of paper and write down what I think is coming to me. And I'll play it once. Whether it's being recorded or not, I can then usually remember it for a sometimes shocking amount of time.

I think there is something to being curious about your choices, but not wanting to kind of pierce the bubble of them, because it takes away from the act of discovering.