Elizabeth Kim Quotes

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.

The multilevel, the conscious and the unconscious, is natural when I write scripts, when I come up with ideas and stories.

I try to begin writing as close to a dreamlike state as I can get.

I'm very happy for others to engage in conjecture, but if I was ever conscious of what I'm thinking about when I'm writing, oh my God, I'd be totally lost.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

I prefer to write first drafts as soon as possible after waking, so that the oneiric inscape is still present to me.

A lot of time you write out of some unconscious place. I try to trust what is coming and where it wants to take me.

I dream a lot, in colour and in sound and scent. Quite a few of my stories have come from dreams.

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

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.

I'm at the mercy of whatever character comes into my head.

I think about the characters I've created, and then I sit down and start typing and see what they will do. There's a lot of subconscious thought that goes on. It amazes me to find out, a few chapters later, why I put someone in a certain place when I did.

Sometimes, I get ideas from dreams. Often, my stories are based on adventures that I, or my friends, have actually lived.

None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.

I'm not a wildly gifted person; I don't play an instrument or speak another language or have great accomplishments in another field, as many writers do. But writing feels natural to me; the act of it seems to free up my unconscious, so that sometimes I feel that I have access to more ideas and information than my conscious mind could think up.

Stories come to me in mysterious ways, more like dreams than reasoned creations.

I just let the character speak to me and things appear.

The other thing in composition is opening up the unconscious.

In my head, at least, the business of spinning stories has no closing time. Twists in my characters' lives, glimpses of their secrets, obstacles to their dreams... all arrive unbidden when I'm getting cash at the ATM, walking my son to camp, singing a hymn at a wedding.

When you write a story, it just flows and you don't control it. It's subconscious.

I'm sure I have a process, but it mostly takes place in my dreams.

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.

When I started writing, I was a great rationalist and believed I was absolutely in control. But the older one gets, the more confused, and for an artist I think that is quite a good thing: you allow in more of your instinctual self; your dreams, fantasies and memories. It's richer, in a way.

By the time I sit down and face the blank page I am raring to go. I tell it as if I'm talking to my best friend or one of my grandchildren.

When I wrote my first novel - I was nineteen - I did it very quickly. If you write fast, you feel like you're entering something not yet familiar - a world rather than thoughts about the world.