Thomas McGuane Quotes

I love bouncing my words off of someone else's, and the fact that writing a story with someone else guarantees you'll get something you never, ever would have written on your own.

It's much like writing a screenplay with someone else and that's how we view it, I think.

I love writing with other artists, I really do. Because you can try to guess what they would want to say and how they would sing it.

I love the fact that you collaborate with your readers when you write a book.

'Where The Wild Things Are,' I think I could have written on my own. When I brought Dave Eggers on, I already had 60 pages of notes. I technically could have, but I don't think I was ready to. I needed him to be there and help me.

I really challenge every actor at the beginning of a process, and I always say, 'I have an idea that I'm going to bring to the table. I hope and expect that you will have an idea and bring it to the table. But the way I really want to work is that together we're going to have a third idea that is better than either of our ideas.'

I think most co-directors and co-writers just hold hands.

I like to write with people I have a relationship with; otherwise it's kind of scary, and you hold back because you don't want to pour your guts out to someone you never met.

If you're going to write a song, try to get together with a collaborator because it's better to write with collaborators.

I believe the better I can write on my own, the better I can be of service in a co-write. The big thing with a co-write is trust, and it's not so much what you get the first time you sit down with that writer. It's the relationship that you build that you're in. So you can trust throwing out all your ideas and how strong you think they might be.

Books don't exist unless you read them. And it's a two way process - you write the book as you read it and you fill in the gaps. You discover it and you put the marks together and without you doing it they're just marks.

A novel is a relationship, you know? When you read a book, the writer has done half the work, and you're doing half the work. You're providing the imagination; the words are turning into pictures in your mind. There's an active relationship that's going on.

Actors and directors work on things together. That's how I like to work, anyway. I don't want to be told what to do. I want to share it with someone and work it out together.

Having a connection and chemistry with a director is really key.

There's a fairy story called the 'The Shoemaker and the Elves' where this old cobbler keeps leaving leather out overnight and wakes up the next day, and there's a new pair of shoes. Co-authoring is a little like that. You send off the manuscript to your partner, and a few days later, you check your email, and hey, there's more book in here!

Well, unlike a lot of authors, I will be the one to cop to having a ghostwriter. I've always written with someone else.

Creator and reader are partners in the invisible creating something out of nothing, time and time again.

Obviously, writing together is very intimate because it's sort of acting where you need to get to a really deep place to get the most emotional song.

When I'm writing with Tony Iommi, for example, still it's very easy. We go in, and I know exactly what his style is. It's very distinctive, and you know exactly what he's looking for, and we know exactly where we're going from the first chord.

You get the initial script, and then things sort of change here and there, but the whole thing is this sort of mushy collaboration, which I love.

There is always a collaboration between the director and the actors, and you always have to listen as the actors have to listen to you as a director. In the end, you as a director, of course, are the captain on the ship.

Collaboration is about listening to someone else and adding your own feelings about that thought.

With 'Start With Me,' I sent it to Gunna and he sent it right back. I didn't have to ask him. If I send you a song, you gonna vibe to it and if you don't, it's cool.

The only formula we have when we work together is that we both have to have a product we can endorse when we finish. Something we both like. It's a matter of compromise. In the end what you get is what both of us can agree on. In that comes Tears for Fears. I don't know what the mix or magic is, that's just what it is.

If I could get someone like John Grisham or someone like that to sit down and write a book with me, I'd love that.