Quentin Tarantino Quotes

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 write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.

If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.

In all fields of creativity you see the result of work that has become habit. Where the creative impulse has become flaccid or has died out altogether, and yet because it is our work and our life we continue to do it.

My only ritual is to just sit down and write, write every day.

Everything I have ever written has been in the same chair, in the same room.

Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.

I tend to have a hard time working on pieces long before they're due. That's why I think the fact that I write a column is really good for me - the column has to be done, and there's no getting around it.

Sometimes I find it too hot to run, and sometimes too cold. Or too cloudy. But I still go running. I know that if I didn't go running, I wouldn't go the next day either. It's not in human nature to take unnecessary burdens upon oneself, so one's body soon becomes disaccustomed. It mustn't do that. It's the same with writing. I write every day so that my mind doesn't become disaccustomed.

My training was never to drink after dinner nor before I wrote nor while I was writing.

If you want to be a writer, I have two pieces of advice. One is to be a reader. I think that's one of the most important parts of learning to write. The other piece of advice is 'Just do it!' Don't think about it, don't agonize, sit down and write.

I always do my draft in long hand because even the ink is part of the flow.

Had I mentioned to someone around 1795 that I planned to write, anyone with any sense would have told me to write for two hours every day, with or without inspiration. Their advice would have enabled me to benefit from the ten years of my life I totally wasted waiting for inspiration.

I would never tell myself, you have to write 20 pages today or something. But I do try to show up. Read what I wrote, fix things.

I think most writers have to have a practice of writing. For me it is very early in the morning. I try to make it a separate world from the rest of my life.

First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.

You can't be a writer if you don't write, it's just that simple.

Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type or write with your toes-it's still just work.

It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine.

I think best with a pencil in my hand.

Writers aren't born, they're made - from practice, reading, and a lot of caffeine.

Songwriting requires some sort of ceremony to even get the process started, and it can be somewhat arbitrary.

There is an advantage in having a routine and working with the same people when you can and in writing as a regular thing and filming as a regular thing. That routine pays off for you. You get a lot of productivity that way, rather than sitting around waiting for inspiration and waiting for the perfect thing to happen. I would be much less productive that way.

Many writers-in-waiting spend a lot of time avoiding the work at hand. The most common way to avoid writing is by procrastination. This is the writer's greatest enemy. There is little to say about it except that once you decide to write every day, you must make yourself sit at the desk or table for the required period whether or not you are putting down words. Make yourself take the time even if the hours seem fruitless. Ideally, after a few days or weeks of being chained to the desk, you will submit to the story that must be told.

I'm not typing. I write only by longhand. I've always written first drafts by hand and then once I was into a second or third draft I wrote insert pages on a typewriter. But I got rid of all my typewriters about three or four novels ago and now I do everything by hand. I write by hand because it makes me go slow and going slow is what I like.