Steven Heighton Quotes

Creation is a drug I can't do without.

Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can't quite get off their back. And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions.

I don't know which was the first love - music or fashion.

To write anything tolerable, the mind must be in a natural, proper disposition; provocatives, in that case, as well as in another,will only produce miserable, abortive performances.

My passions drive me to the typewriter every day of my life, and they have driven me there since I was twelve. So I never have to worry about schedules. Some new thing is always exploding in me, and it schedules me, I don’t schedule it. It says: Get to the typewriter right now and finish this.

I write to music, so every script I have has its own playlist. Music just opens me up to the emotions that I'm writing.

Pay attention to your passions. They are the key to starting and finishing the book you are meant to write. I don't believe in talent. I believe in passion.

Songwriting is like ... being possessed. You try to go to sleep but the song won't let you.

When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.

I'm not a writer. I marvel at writing. I am sometimes absolutely astounded when I read something and I think how in the world did that man or that woman sit down at a typewriter, a computer or a pen and an ink well, and seemingly have nothing come between their heart and that pen.

Writers feel like a middleman, standing with pen in hand over the page. A force greater than me stands above telling me what to write. That may sound romantic, but that's how it feels.

Writing is my passion. It is a way to experience the ecstatic. The root understanding of the word ecstasy—“to stand outside”—comes to me in those moments when I am immersed so deeply in the act of thinking and writing that everything else, even flesh, falls away.

If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway.

That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman--the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote.

No creative writer knows what is commercial and what isn't. You just write from your heart, you write from the deepest, creative urges in you, and you write from your soul, and you just either get lucky or not.

Being in the mood to write, like being in the mood to make love, is a luxury that isn't necessary in a long-term relationship. Just as the first caress can lead to a change of heart, the first sentence, however tentative and awkward, can lead to a desire to go just a little further.

It's the stories that make my heart beat faster ...those are the ones to write about

I don't write because there's an audience. I write because there is literature.

The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. The least energizing emotion to write out of is admiration. It is very difficult to write out of because the basic feeling that goes with admiration is a passive contemplative mood.

If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.

I don't know what I'm going to write when I begin to write. It feels like you are walking down a path, but you can't see around the bend and you don't know where you are going to go, which is fun.

I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.

The only reason to write is from love.

Love is the main generator of all good writing... Love, passion, compassion, are all welded together.

I write with music. I write scenes in movies that hopefully can earn the use of some songs that are powerful to me.