Jane Goldman Quotes

I need an office and a place I can sit down to get away from television and just write.

I build a kind of wall between myself and t he model so that I can paint in peace behind it. Otherwise, she might say something that confuses and distracts me.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

I'm not too easily distracted now I've had practice, but I write with nothing to look at. I used to rent an office that just had a view of a wall!

I probably write best in my office, which is an extra bedroom in my house.

There's no writer's block; there's only distraction.

When I write I find a quiet place.

I have a gorgeous office at home but tend not to write there because there are so many distractions.

But I never listen to music while I'm writing.

If I could go upstairs and write every day, I would be happy. I don't need recreation.

Brooklyn is kind of my writer's retreat.

The writer's room is a really interesting place to be.

I like my surroundings to be pretty spare and severe. It helps me to concentrate on my work. All I ever do here is go from my studio to my bedroom. Everything else is extraneous. I never entertain, because to me, New York is about meeting people in public spaces, absorbing a little bit of their energy.

I write in the mornings once the kids have gone to school, taking my laptop and a coffee to a little writer's room in town where I plant noise-cancelling headphones on my head and get to work.

I always write with music. It takes me a while to figure out the right piece of music for what I'm working on. Once I figure it out, that's the only thing I'll play.

Intellectual work is essentially a lonely process, and if you can find a way of doing something so that you're in company without being disturbed, that, for me, is the critical thing. I often get to feel isolated so often if I'm sitting either where there aren't people or isn't a view.

What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude.

The problem with too beautiful a view is that it's alright for the mulling stage. But for the writing stage, you want to be somewhere without a view, especially if it is very different from what you're writing.

I don't know about other writers, but for myself, to write I must be relatively quiet - it's very difficult to write with the telephone and the doorbell ringing and conversation going on; I'm not that good a writer to write through all that!

I never listen to music when I'm writing.

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.

Decide where and when you want to write. I like space, and silence is an inspiration to me.

When I work, I wear pants usually because I want to be comfortable. I wear dark colors, especially in winter, because I don't want to concentrate on myself but on what I'm working on. Because I really, really love clothes, I can start to think too much about myself. It's distracting.

My workspace is defined by books, ephemera, quiet and light. I don't have a computer, telephone or a fax machine there.

You cannot be creative with people around you.