Isobelle Carmody Quotes

I'm writing a book and working on my one-woman show, Learning To Be Human.

I think anything that anyone writes that's any good is going to have a lot of autobiography.

When I lead essay workshops, I ask students to come up with at least five topics, which they'll narrow down to one. The winning idea should be the story the student is most excited to tell because it honestly reflects his or her best self.

It took me years of attempts and failed drafts before I finally wrote the elegies I needed to write.

I guess I could say that I pursue questions that interest me in ways that interest me on the page, but that's awfully vague.

Writing is an incessant process of discovery.

I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something. If they write about their own experiences, something true is going to emerge.

You write to please yourself, you write to move yourself, to engage yourself in the asking of questions that are important to you.

There are bits of me in all my characters.

If you write something that's personal, there's going to be elements of yourself in it.

As far as writing, it's grown because I've really grown comfortable with who I am.

My first novel was a challenge to myself. No one had an inkling that I was working on it.

I want to get within myself and write. I really, really want to write.

I think my job is to try and be as honest as I can with what is in my mind and how I feel - I think that's what you're supposed to do, if you're a good writer. So I try to do that. I know I do that. I do do that.

I never think of the reader. I am curious about things; I need to find out, so off I go.

The writer needs to react to his or her own internal universe, to his or her own point of view. If he or she doesn't have a personal point of view, it's impossible to be a creator.

I essentially write for myself.

I've always written about things that cause me to feel something.

Usually a feeling of disappointment follows the book, because what I hoped to write is not what I actually accomplished. However, it becomes a motivation to write the next book.

All my songs come from me because I only seem able to write about myself and my experiences.

I think that I've just kind of found my niche, if that makes sense. I still write the same, but I feel like I've found what separates me, and I always try to stay in that when I write. It took me a long time to discover that, so I try to be protective.

There were always moments where I'd say, 'What else can I do with my life?' But when I was 30 years old and discovered I could write - I wrote 'Black Cloud' in six weeks - it opened up a whole new world for me.

I think at this point I only write books about questions I really want to figure out. They're indulgences, essentially. I think, 'What would I like to spend five years really thinking about? What could I gain from thinking about for five years?'

The way I personally work is I like to write what I know, what I feel, and also where I am.

I am always writing to myself.