Jon Hopkins Quotes

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.

I go through cycles with my writing. I have cycles where I'm up all night and lose track of time, and then I go for months without a thing to write about. My song 'So Good, So Right' came to me while I was washing dishes after a dinner party.

There's no writer's block; there's only distraction.

I never allowed writer's block to be a reality. I framed it up for myself early on. I said, 'OK, if I'm not writing, the well is just filling up. I'm going to be patient with this.'

I have all these computers and keyboards and synthesizers, and I rattle away. For instance, with The Lion King I wrote over four hours worth of tunes, and they were really pretty -but totally meaningless. So in the end I came up with material I liked. We worked on The Lion King for four years, but I wasn't toying until the last three-and-a-half weeks properly. On Crimson Tide, on the other hand, I just went in and within seconds I knew what I wanted.

That's the best thing about writing, when you're in that zone, you're porous, ready to absorb the solution.

The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.

I think good artists know when they're on a roll, and they recognize when lightning is striking. It's a very fortunate thing to have that inspiration and not to overanalyze it or mess with it; you just follow it if you love what you do.

Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work.

When I sit down to write, I just let the goose out of the bottle.

Weirdly, often the more I write, the more ideas I have.

Usually, I create tunes that are fragmented. I think the biggest obstacle for people with their creativity is that they feel they have to sit down and create this finished, polished product.

I've gone periods of maybe four months without writing anything, but it's not a problem. It just means something's building inside you, and it'll build and it'll build, and at some point it'll come out, and it does, and it usually comes out in three or four songs, and you play it that way, really.

While writing, I tend to repeat the same song, endlessly, for thousands of times. This helps me ignore any lyrics, and helps create a consistent mood for each book.

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.

I don't listen to anything when I'm writing. I need total quiet, which is astounding, given that I spent years working for a newspaper and having to write features surrounded by ringing phones and people shouting.

I devote most of my day to writing, and try to turn out at least four pages a day. As for what triggers the creative process, it's a mystery to me! Characters often just walk on the page, and I wait to see what they do and say while I'm writing them.

When I am composing, I try to clear my mind of having to publish, or having to sell a book or find readers. That kind of thinking gets in the way.

When the ideas are coming, I don't stop until the ideas stop because that train doesn't come along all the time.

The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I'll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I've written a whole song in an hour.

Every day you can write a song but some days there is just some magic in the air and something special about the catch; other days you write all day on a song line or idea.

Writing is challenging work because it's so easy to get consumed with how it's going, what's going to happen to it, who's going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.

When I finished a song that I thought was good, I thought, I don't know where that came from, so I have no idea if I can do that again. I'm talking like, a hundred and fifty songs down the line. I still feel that.

I write between 5.30am and 9.00. That way, I hope I carry over something from my dream time.