Isak Dinesen Quotes

Who will free me from hurry, flurry, the feeling of a crowd pushing behind me, of being hustled and crushed? How can I regain even for a minute the feeling of ample leisure I had during my early, my creative years? Then I seldom felt fussed, or hurried. There was time for work, for play, for love, the confidence that if a task was not done at the appointed time, I easily could fit it into another hour. I used to take leisure for granted, as I did time itself.

I am a man in a hurry.

I write because writing is something that I have to do. And it doesn't matter whether people like it or not. When I write, I feel the pressure and anxiety that come with taking an empty piece of paper and trying to fill it with something from your own consciousness.

With a label, pressure is added. Being independent, you don't feel a lot of pressure.

If you're constantly hamstrung by worry that people aren't going to like it, you can't do your job.

Let's say you have to catch a plane, and you are packing your suitcase and moving fast. Most people would call that stress. Most people live stressed like that all the time.

I think it's real important to enjoy what you do, have fun with it and not to put the pressure on yourself of everyone watching.

I have a horror of silence while I'm writing. It's like the universe is howling at me if I don't have it.

Every time I improvise I'm aware that I could be ruining what it is that we're doing and we'll just have to do it again.

Everybody has a nightmare, and everybody apparently has falling dreams, and everybody has the drowning dream, and everybody has certain kinds of sexual manifestation dreams, as well as our stress dreams; I didn't study for the algebra test, I didn't study for my driving test, you know, all those dreams. I still have those dreams, and it's just such an interesting thing that our mind can turn against us, our own mind, you know we all have.

Day and night I always dream with open eyes." - José Martí

The dreams are that you're gonna have a great series and win. The nightmares are that you're gonna let the winning run score on a ground ball through your legs. Those things happen, you know. I think a lot of it is just fate.

The blank page gives us the right to dream.

With knowledge, our creation can go in any direction - from the worst kind of drama, to the most beautiful dream. Then the best way to express our creativity is with love and awareness of what we really are.

Some of the best auditions I've ever had have been when my agent called and said, "They want you 20 minutes ago, in an office in Century City, to see you for something." It's actually sometimes a really good thing. I don't have time to second-guess myself, I don't have time to overthink things, and I don't have time to get bogged down in stuff. I'm not sitting there thinking for a week and a half, before I'm supposed to go in front of a network president to do something. That just gives you time to be nervous.

My books and records are arranged according to subject, and within each subject, they're alphabetical by author or artist. The music tapes are alphabetical and the performance tapes are in chronological order.I like to control my environment, because I feel if I have my physical space in order, then I'm free to dream.

That afternoon he told me that the difference between human beings and animals was that human beings were able to dream while awake. He said the purpose of books was to permit us to exercise that faculty. Art, he said, was a controlled madness… He said books weren't made of themes, which you could write essays about, but of images that inserted themselves into your brain and replaced what you were seeing with your eyes.

I just have to be myself, and not worry about everyone looking at me and watching.

Once you cross the 50 you feel like an unsaddled horse.

I was once walking in an airport and a woman came up to me and said, 'Be zany!'. That'd be like walking up to Baryshikov and going, 'Plie! Just do a plie! Do it! Do a releve right now! Lift my wife!'

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

The best reason for having dreams is that in dreams no reasons are necessary.

You can think about red. You can think about pink. You can think up a horse. Oh, the THINKS you can think!

As soon as something becomes art I think you get over the fear