Phil Anselmo Quotes

When I write for 'n+1,' I begin by doing a lot of reading, to try to convince myself I'm not stupid. Then I scribble down a paragraph here, a paragraph there, when a notion strikes. Then I see if I can arrange those notions in a way that yields an argument.

Read as much as you can, and then sit down and write.

Sometimes a line enters your head, and you're so grateful for it. You go online to check to see if anyone wrote it before you. You must have stolen it.

Having imagination it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that if you were unimaginative would take you only a minute.

I do like the research part of writing, I must admit.

I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.

I have 40 years of unpublished material, the ones they don't pick, and the reason I don't redraw them or use them again is that I like to use my brain every day and come up with new jokes.

I write in longhand and assemble lots of notes, and then I try to collate them into a coherent chronology. It's like groping along in the dark. I like writing and find it challenging, but I don't find it easy.

By the time I sit down ready to write, I've done a lot of longhand and a lot of note collecting along the way.

Every so often, I'll get an idea from a dream, but most of the time, ideas come to me while I'm toiling away at the keyboard just like every other writer.

I'm a writer, not an activist. My job is to analyse things, to think them through and examine them.

A lot of my ideas for books come from newspaper articles. But I don't like to be actively looking for ideas.

Actually, after while, finding the ideas is the easy part. Sorting them through and turning them into stories, now, that's the hard work.

I have a very long pre-writing process where I'm jotting down ideas in a notebook and ripping out relevant newspaper articles - a long fact-finding mission.

I've always thought that writing isn't really that hard. It's having a good idea that's hard.

I write everything I do. On the average, it takes you about sixty months from the first molecule of an idea to it being in front of an audience. I'm actually somebody that creates their own stuff.

Seventy percent of what I write, I throw out. I can write very easily, but writing original things is the hard bit.

I've always thought that the balance between the side of my mind that knows what it is doing and the side that really hasn't got a clue has to be carefully maintained because if you write too knowingly then you get chilly, and if you write too unknowingly you write bollocks that nobody else can understand.

As soon as you sit down to write about something you are pressing your nose deeper into the sewer of facts.

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

I've done projects where I've read 25 books and did all kinds of journal and character work for hours.

What I often do when I'm writing, if I can't find that story, I go out and I hunt for it.

The truth of the matter is coming up with a title is one of the most challenging things we do.

While driving to work, I'll choose to think about a particular subject rather than just have random thought streams landing on one subject or another. For example, I might think about the structure of an opinion. Or I might think about the first sentence of an opinion, refining it.

Writing is investigation.