Sidonie Gabrielle Colette Quotes

To write is, indeed, no unpleasing employment, when one sentiment readily produces another, and both ideas and expressions present themselves at the first summons; but such happiness, the greatest genius does not always obtain; and common writers know it only to such a degree, as to credit its possibility. Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

If I find out I have to write today and nothing else, that’s a perfect day. I know a lot of people who are great at it and make it look easy who are tortured and miserable people. Writing for me is perfect peace.

But how do I get to having to write a book?... It was a mother who bore me, not an inkwell!

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

You have to sink way down to a level of hopelessness and desperation to find the book that you can write.

I seldom know what I'm going to write when I sit down. There isn't much agony and sweat of the human spirit involved in doing it. The writing's easy, it's the living that is sometimes difficult.

I have some irrepressible pop impulses to write an appealing, concise song. And I also have some irrepressible kind of restlessness as well, and I need to keep myself interested. When I'm left to my own devices, there's a struggle.

The few words of a title are the hardest words for any author to come up with.

As for the zone, I always find the zone immediately after I am sure I will never ever find the zone again because it has left me for some other, better writer.

I don't know why I write what I write.

I think people who create and write, it actually does flow-just flows from into their head, into their hand, and they write it down. It's simple.

Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is a fight to the finish between black charcoal and white paper.

I'm really happy when I'm actively creating things. When I'm frustrated and not excited, it's because I haven't written anything in a month or so.

I won't write a book. I haven't got a magnum opus in me.

And, of course, there were some times when I had writer's block and I had a hard time figuring out how to express what I wanted to express.

Songwriting was very tough for me... I would go in and sit and hope for inspiration to come, and it was rarely forthcoming.

As authors, we know that it is very difficult to unleash one's creativity.

I don't have a burning desire to go out and document anything. It just happens when it happens. It's not a conscious effort, nor is it a struggle. Wouldn't do it if it was. The idea of the suffering artist has never appealed to me. Being here is suffering enough.

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

We don't often talk about the fact that writing is all about rhythm. When you get too up in your head, you can lose a lot of your writing. Sometimes what a writer really needs to do is go dancing.

Hitch your unconscious mind to your writing arm.

The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up.

...assume that art begins in unhappiness. True, the goal of art is to convey a vision of coherence and peace, but the effort to develop that vision starts in the more common experience of confusion and pain.

I'm a bit like a sponge. When I'm not writing I absorb life like water. When I write I squeeze the sponge a little - and out comes, not water but ink.

Art never comes from happiness.