Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine.

Go where the pleasure is in your writing. Go where the pain is. Write the book you would like to read. Write the book you have been trying to find but have not found. But write. And remember, there are no rules for our profession. Ignore rules. Ignore what I say here if it doesn't help you. Do it your own way. Every writer knows fear and discouragement. Just write.The world is crying for new writing. It is crying for fresh and original voices and new characters and new stories. If you won't write the classics of tomorrow, well, we will not have any.

I don't write on demand - I wait for inspiration to come.

What provides you with subject matter is your own language - and that's all.

Writing is the starting point from which all goodness (and crappiness) flows.

I don't write a book so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me.

When I choose the title [for my book], which was my favorite title, I felt sure there was going to be a dozen books maybe with that name already because it's so obvious to me that that's the message. I was surprised it hasn't been the title of a single book. Well, there is a Shel Silverstein children's book called Falling Upwards. But no one has chosen Falling Upward as a title and I'm very happy it's right on the cover.

You have to write the book that wants to be written.

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

Readers would email me and say, 'Please write a novel about so-and-so,' but it has to come from yourself and not so much from your readership.

I love the creative process and being able to build something out of nothing.

If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world it will come through the expression of your own personality, that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature.

The hardest part is not to repeat yourself. I don't really believe my core obsessions are going to change, but you need to look for ways to express them that are different. The main reason for doing that is not to bore yourself, and obviously, I don't want to bore readers.

No thesaurus can give you those words, no rhyming dictionary. They must happen out of you.

I prefer writing originals.

The downside of videos is that it will put my vision in front of other people, so they might not get the chance to create their own.

You have to transmit to them what it's like being in the theater. And it has to come from somewhere inside you and not by being like what somebody did last year.

Anything that I write comes from the soul.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

When I try to write I try to write something different every time. That's the challenge.

My concepts are never bright ideas; they're never notions I think will sell or be trendy or attract new fans. I don't think that way. All I can do is sing from my life.

Trying to force creativity is never good.

Everyone has his own sound. I'm not going to presume how to tell anybody how to write.

For years, I was watching other people have so much fun playing out their version of authorship, like Louis C.K. and Larry David. As I watched them do their thing, I began to pine for the days when I had a lot less expected of me and, often, a lot more creative freedom. The courage that those guys have is always captivating to me.