Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

That's the advantage of being a writer: No matter what happens, as long as you survive it, it goes into the work.

I write as a way of keeping myself going. You build your life around writing, and it's what gets you through. So it's partly just curiosity to see what you can do.

I have never sought the reason why I write.

You know what's weird, I just write to write, with no intention, I just write.

I can see a version of my life where it all becomes meaningless. On a good day, writing seems noble. Other times, it's narcissistic and pointless.

My mother always told me if you write about life, you will always be in the game. Just don't write songs... write life. I decided to take her up on that.

Writing is far too hard work to say what someone else wants me to. Serving it as a craft, using it as a way of growing in my own understanding, seems to me to be a beautiful way to live. And if that product is shareable with other people, so much the better.

There's really no differentiation between the work I make and the world I live in.

I think I'm drawn to writing about something which feels intense and important.

I have always thought of myself as a writer, only because I need things to direct, and I can't not write the things that I direct.

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

If you're always thinking about someone else's work, about the tradition you're working in, how can you possibly make anything good?

You have to live what you write, or you have to know it. There are exceptions, like story songs, where you just have to have your facts straight. But I think you don't have to live a hard life to be a good or interesting songwriter.

I'm an author who likes assignments, who needs suggestions, ideas I would never have thought of otherwise - then something happens inside my alien head. Other people have to decide whether or not I'm a good writer, but I do have the ability to write in different styles.

One of the freedoms you get if you earn a lot of money from a book is to throw away what you want. And if you throw a lot away, the good stuff always comes back; nothing is lost.

I don't mind sitting at home playing the guitar for a year as long as I'm making good films.

If I don't feel like writing today or for a few days, I don't. And I don't think about it. It is not an obligation-it is the greatest privilege.

People and places are the source of my work, both in prose and verse-and this remark is not the truism it seems, for I do not distinguish as sharply between a place and a person as most people seem to do.

I always talk to my students about the need to write for the joy of writing. I try to sort of disaggregate the acclaim from the act of writing.

We just wanted to write a bunch of songs that we thought were good songs.

I'm a writer! If you work in an office, it dampens you. It makes you fit a routine. The effect of being a writer is not dissimilar to being long-term unemployed. And everyone knows that is not good for you.

The sublime moment seems to be only a product of allowing yourself to get through, to get to a lot of stuff in your life, write about a lot of stuff and not edit yourself. That is a great lesson to learn for anybody that writes or creates in anyway, to be able to make something without being good or bad.

Any good production team is going to allow an actor to breathe life into the characters - that's why they hired that woman, that man, whatever the case.

I love making music. I love being involved in arranging music. It's very natural to know what I want to hear next and come up with ideas that are variations of what might be good.

I believe in the verb, not the noun - I am not a writer, but someone compelled to write.