Jonas Mekas Quotes

What I get to do is have fun in my house, by myself, and put it on the Internet.

Calling 'Instagram' a photo-sharing app is like calling a newspaper a letter-sharing book, or a Mozart grand era symphony a series of notes. 'Instagram' is less about the medium and more about the network.

What is useful about when there is a sort of pull-out to reveal moment going on is that it actually focuses the mind when you're writing the earlier scenes because you're thinking 'right, how do I? I can only show this amount of the room... I can only show these characters from the waist up because they've all got robot legs!' it's a challenge so it keeps you engaged on some level.

I don't think screenplay writing is the same as writing - I mean, I think it's blueprinting.

I think I came to film-making through writing. I started to write, and people, teachers, responded to my writing.

Well, we're meant to be writing stories today.

I write what needs to be written the way that seems genuinely right. If what comes out of it are stories, then it is my vocation to believe in them and in the fact that they'll interest people and maybe affect their lives.

People always say, "Can writing be taught?" I always think, I can teach you how to write a better sentence, how to do dialogue, how to do character, but I can't teach you how to be a decent person, and I can't teach you how to have something to say.

I think that's a really important role that people sometimes forget about, especially with all these newspaper shutting down and having trouble, where are all these stories going to go? I think you have something really great with all those stories waiting to be told, but I just don't know how it shapes up exactly. I don't think there are going to be a lot of newspaper reporters sitting around not writing.

I sat down and tried to write a story. "Ian MacArthur is a wonderful sweet fellow who wears glasses and peers out of them with delight." That was the first sentence. The problem was that I just couldn't think of the next one. After cleaning my room three times, I decided to leave Ian alone for a while because I was starting to get mad at him.

When I journal, I write about images that I've seen that I think might make good stories. I write about things that I hear that I think I can turn into a story. I write about the story that I'm working on and where I think it might go.

I don't consciously try to take my readers on a journey as I don't really think about my readers when I'm writing. I just try to write what I feel passionately about, to tell a story down onto the page.

In terms of writing, I think what most fiction writers treasure more than anything is the feeling that they're living for the length of a book inside another person.

I've always known that I've wanted to write, but I always saw myself doing that in the context of something other than film, so it was a really beautiful and kind of perfect moment in my life when I realized that I could combine this idea of wanting to write and tell my own stories with the environment I had grown up in and knew well - that I could make film as opposed to writing being a departure from what I knew.

People think that writing is writing, but actually writing is editing. Otherwise, you're just taking notes

There are two kinds of writer: those that make you think, and those that make you wonder.

I think I was probably able to flip characters in my head as if I was playing different roles in order to write the different people because you kind of have to be one person, and inhabit him and write from his voice and be her and write her voice. So I think that helped.

I don't think the function of writing, at least for me as a fiction writer, is to say to people, "Here's the answer." It's not an op-ed.

I always write a draft version of the novel in which I try to develop, not the story, not the plot, but the possibilities of the plot. I write without thinking much, trying to overcome all kinds of self-criticism, without stopping, without giving any consideration to the style or structure of the novel, only putting down on paper everything that can be used as raw material, very crude material for later development in the story.

Once you have your character sitting right there in your head, all you really need to do is wind them up, put them down, and simply write down what they do, say, or think.

The best visual book I can think of is Lynda Barry's What It Is, but although I refer to it all the time it's not a creative writing book per se.

Historical novels are about costumery. I think that's the magic and mystery of fiction. I don't want to write historical fiction but I do want the story to have the feel of history. There's a difference.

A picture can say 1000 words but it can also inspire you to write 1000 more.

A book, at the same time, also has to do with what I call a buzz in the head. It's a certain kind of music that I start hearing. It's the music of the language, but it's also the music of the story. I have to live with that music for a while before I can put any words on the page. I think that's because I have to get my body as much as my mind accustomed to the music of writing that particular book. It really is a mysterious feeling.

Anyone can write five people trapped in a snowstorm. The question is how you get them into the snowstorm. It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience. To think of a plot that is, as Aristotle says, surprising and yet inevitable, is a lot, lot, lot of work.