Quincy Jones Quotes

You lie awake at 3 in the morning thinking of story ideas. You're online at 8 a.m. on a Sunday or midnight on a Wednesday. It's a job that you never push aside.

I think enthusiasm is the answer to passionate writing.

I get passionate about certain subjects, and then I'll write a whole play around it.

Obsession led me to write. It's been that way with every book I've ever written. I become completely consumed by a theme, by characters, by a desire to meet a challenge.

What I'm passionate about is telling stories which mean something to me.

I'm addicted to creating and writing.

People say, write what you know, but it's really, write about what obsesses you. Write about what you're thinking about all the time.

There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed.

Keep me up till five because all your stars are out, and for no other reason…Oh dare to do it Buddy! Trust your heart. You’re a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night. I’m feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I’d give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart.

I'm still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.

I only work on my books at nights and at weekends. It is really just like a hobby.

I think people who are creative are the luckiest people on earth. I know that there are no shortcuts, but you must keep your faith in something Greater than You, and keep doing what you love. Do what you love, and you will find the way to get it out to the world.

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.

I think the key is basically just your determination. As far an artist is concerned, it's just about your drive and your dream.

Poetry was the first step, and from the age of 18, there was nothing else I wanted to do.

Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors.

The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps.

Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius.

For me, being a writer was never a choice. I was born one. All through my childhood I wrote short stories and stuffed them in drawers. I wrote on everything. I didn't do my homework so I could write.

I write characters and stories that move me, and I write from the heart.

I think about fanaticism - oblivion awaits, especially for minor writers, so you have to be a fanatic; you have to be a crank to keep going, but on the other hand, what else would you do with the rest of your life? You gotta do something.

I hope the wonder of what happens to my characters never goes away. That yearning keeps me writing.

I always wanted to write fiction. Always. As far back as I can remember it's been integral to my sense of myself - everything else was always a displacement activity.

There's a desire in me to express something - to match what I hear in my head.

There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings.