Art Buchwald Quotes

What is it that turns people into artists? It often comes from some kind of pain or angst, a need to understand or express something. It very rarely comes from confidence, being raised by parents who want to hear what you have to say and wants to encourage you.

That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.

As an experience, madness is terrific ... and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about.

Being sad and going out on terrible dates and having horrible breakups and then having a shitty job and then quitting the shitty job and then wondering if you shouldn't have quit the shitty job and then getting a new shitty job that you get fired off of after six weeks, it's all so good for your writing.

Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it that way.

I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.

I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.

It's so much work to make a movie, and for me it has to get me off my butt. To get me actually writing you have to strike something inside, you have to hit a power main to get the energy. You have to strike something you care about.

I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.

I love writing. It's one of my favorite jobs. Of the things I get to do, I love sitting in a room and coming up with ideas, and I love going home and pounding them out.

I think writing is the most underrated thing in Hollywood.

When I start to write, words have become physical presence. It was to see if I could bring that private world to life that found its first expression through reading. I really dislike the romantic notion of the artist.

When I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I'm trying to do. I'm frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper.

When you're a writer, everything that interests you feeds into your work.

I enjoy writing. I enjoy that kind of process.

I am always trying to write.

I've never detected a correlation between where I am and what I write. I think there could be something subconscious, though. And I can't really speak for my subconscious.

I started to write in 2001. I wrote the books for the fun of it. It was an old idea I had had since the nineties.

You can look at 'Rumours' and say, 'Well, the album is bright, and it's clean, and it's sunny.' But everything underneath is so dark and murky. What was going on between us created a resonance that goes beyond the music itself.

Writing is nagging, fascinating, troublesome and exciting.

You don't have to have angst to be an artist, but it's grist to the mill. If you want to explore the whole emotional spectrum in your work, it helps to have experienced intense emotions.

People don't stress enough that when they're writing lyrics, they are writing.

When you compose, it's like writing. You're like a writer. You just think all the time.

As authors, we know that it is very difficult to unleash one's creativity.

I write all the time and I try to think of ideas all the time.