Sheila Heti Quotes

Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something.

I procrastinate, and I push writing to the last available moment, because I don't like to settle on anything. I guess you can call it indecision or you can call it holding out for inspiration.

A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.

I have too many ideas for a lifetime.

I remember trying to write at 1, 1:30 A.M., and just sort of falling asleep. And I think that was actually a good creative state for weird ideas. I shifted to a morning schedule once I had two kids, and I still found that if I slept badly, I actually had better ideas.

I write in the mornings, in the bright daylight. But I get most of my good ideas after the sun has gone down and the dark is on the land.

When I'm looking for an idea, I'll do anything--clean the closet, mow the lawn, work in the garden.

I can't really say - if I've run out of ideas until I've had my next set of ideas.

In making movies, time is so short-because it is so expensive-that we tend to neglect the place from which the best ideas come, namely that part of ourselves that dreams. The unconscious is our best collaborator.

Every morning between 9 and 12 I go to my room and sit before a piece of paper. Many times, I just sit for three hours with no ideas coming to me. But I know one thing. If an idea does come between 9 and 12 I am there ready for it.

In my mind, I'm doing everything, but in reality, I'm doing very, very little. You come up with one idea, one moment, one line that leads to something and you feel like it's easy. And then, you sit back and think there would be no show without that.

If I get ideas independently of the act of writing, they never really fit. So for me, there's no hanging out, waiting for inspiration.

When you get an idea, go and write. Don't waste it in conversation.

People ask me whether I think that one day I might wake up one morning and run dry, but I've had the opposite feeling - that I would die before I had time to write all the ideas in my drawer.

I get so many ideas for songs, but I'm so seldom disciplined enough to sit down and crank them out.

I have ideas whirring around my head all the time.

The horrible truth is that I am lazy and I am going to write and do bits that just hand themselves to me.

I have a folder in my office with about 400 ideas in it. So it will take me another 40 years to get through those.

I have an ideas book at home with far more ideas than I will ever be able to write.

I have ideas. I hear voices. Words accumulate. It's still an overriding impulse. And I'm self-employed, which means I have to be sensible and motivated about paying the bills.

I have ideas saved on my computer that I visit from time to time to see if one may shine and motivate me.

Being lazy does not mean that you do not create. In fact, lying around doing nothing is an important, nay crucial, part of the creative process. It is meaningless bustle that actually gets in the way of productivity. All we are really saying is, give peace a chance.

A good artist has less time than ideas.

Ideas aren't magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down.

'Inspiration' is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything.