Jim Crace Quotes

If it pleases you and you can write at all, it's gonna please somebody else.

It's always struck me as unfair that writing has so little sensation when it's going well.

I'm constantly coming up with new strategies for getting to the mental place where writing is so joyous and playful that I almost can't help putting the words down.

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.

It's not that I sit down and write great stuff without thinking, not at all. Most of it is terrible. But the stuff that feels fun and fresh to me tends to happen fairly unthinkingly.

Left to it's own devices, writing is like weather. It has a drama, a form, a force to it that shapes the day. Just as good rain clears the air, a good writing day clears the psyche. There is something very right about simply letting yourself write. And the way to do that is to begin, to begin where you are.

I may be writing well, I may be writing poorly, but I enjoy the act of writing and sometimes when it turns out okay, I feel an elation that is incomparable.

I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

I write what I'd like to read and just hope that, along the way, others might like to read them, too.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

I write just knowing that I enjoy writing. But if I have to write, it seems like nothing comes. But when I go there for my own pleasure, the Lord might just give me loads of stuff all at once.

Sometimes I write with music on, and if I'm in a good flow, I don't even hear it.

Writing is a lot of fun for me; that's not to say it's easy, but I really do enjoy it.

I never feel more myself than when I'm writing; I never enjoy any day more than a good writing day.

I enjoy writing. I enjoy that kind of process.

I write what I'd like to read and just hope that, along the way, others might like to read them, too.

I found that I was much more interested in writing and that I didn't like the illustrating at all. I had always been the hardest on myself when I drew and painted. I am not hard on myself when I write. I like what I write, so it is a much happier process.

When I'm writing, I'm just in it and trying to figure out what seems best.

I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true.

I enjoy the research and love actually creating the words. There's not too much I find a drudge when it comes to writing.

I pick up my pen. It flows. A building appears. There it is. There is nothing more to say.

When I'm writing a book, you can't think about your audience. You're going to be in big trouble if you think about it. You're got to write from deep inside.

I don't usually think of my writing as a 'challenge' because I enjoy the process so much. I suppose that's what's helped me to avoid 'writer's block' all these years.

Early on my career, I figured out that I just have to write the book I have to write at that moment. Whatever else is going on in the culture is just not that important. If you could get the culture to write your book, that would be great. But the culture can't write your book.

The writing that feels the best to me, I experience sometimes, is a kind of weirdly deep listening - like, it feels like if you just listen hard enough, the next sentence will tell you what it needs to be.