Anthony McCarten Quotes

I spent a lot of time in my head, but not like caring about what everybody else thought, just literally in my own world.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

I like to go into a little shell and be a hermit and make music for a while.

I think to be writer you have to enjoy being alone. I was a loner as a teenager and was always drawn to characters in books and films who were at the fringes.

My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.

I spent a lot of my childhood in my own head, making up stories. I didn't have a lot of outside influences, so I was able to make my own decisions about what I wanted to do.

I could type in a closet and be fine. It's just a matter of cocooning myself. Just me and the story.

Growing up a lonely only child prepared me for the years of solitude spent as a writer; years spent in the company of people who don't exist, imaginary people you have conversations with. It's a paid form of madness, this writing stuff.

I've always kind of lived in my own world.

I played a lot of dress-up in my room. I really liked being alone. I had a lot of friends, but I had an only-child, live-in-my-head personality.

I like to live in my own mind, regardless of everyone and everything, working out the intimate puzzles that are my stories and novels.

I am alone here in my own mind. There is no map and there is no road. It is one of a kind just as yours is.

You could say, in a vulgar Freudian way, that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child, I was most happy being alone. This has not changed.

Writing can be a very solitary business. It's you sat at a desk typing words into a computer. It can get lonely sometimes and lots of writers live quite isolated lives.

I started writing because I found I could spend more time in my own imagination by doing that than I could by reading.

Getting close to books, and spending time by myself, I was obliged to think about things I would never have thought about if I was busy romping around with a brother and sister.

I was one of those dark, quiet kids that wrote poetry.

I've led a very isolated existence since I was 6 years old. It's kind of been me and my mind.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

I don't have many friends. It's not because I'm a misanthrope. It's because I'm reserved. I'm self-contained. I get all my adventures in my head when I'm writing my books.

I have a huge, active imagination, and I think I'm really scared of being alone; because if I'm left to my own devices, I'll just turn into a madwoman.

Solitude is a breeding ground for idiosyncrasy, and I relish that about it, the way it liberates whim.

I've spent my life alone in a room with a typewriter.

The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.

A writer needs a life of introspection.