David Grann Quotes

When I'm working on a novel, I work 70-hour weeks.

With my writing, because I live it, I have to be consumed by it, and that means you have to forget your other life, which is constantly pulling you from your work.

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 love a lot of things, and I'm pretty much obsessive about most things I do, whether it be gardening, or architecture, or music. I'd be an obsessive hairdresser.

When you're making movies you've got to get obsessive.

You should be writing for the love of the story, and when it comes time to return to the manuscript, everything else belongs behind a closed door.

I love writing, and I think I'm kind of a workaholic. I'm happiest when I'm working.

A manuscript under way always gave me something to do; only while enduring the aimlessness between books was I truly glum.

When I read about Joyce, I realised that there was no eight-till-one in his life: it was 24 hours a day for him.

When I am on a set and I am working, I am almost near-obsessive about it. I love the process.

I'm really pretty ridiculous about how much I work on my music, and I don't look at it as necessarily a good quality. I look at it as a side effect of my apparent insanity. It is what it is, man.

I work very hard at each story, at every sentence.

I think that very often younger writers don't appreciate how much hard work is involved in writing. The part of writing that's magic is the thinnest rind on the world of creation. Most of a writer's life is just work. It happens to be a kind of work that the writer finds fulfilling in the same way that a watchmaker can happily spend countless hours fiddling over the tiny cogs and bits of wire. ... I think the people who end up being writers are people who don't get bored doing that kind of tight focus in small areas.

Once I get on something, once I have something that I'm working on, then I become very obsessive. In a good way. I mean,... is there a positive way to say obsessive? It's a good thing and if you're out there and you're working on something right now and you're crazed and you're up in the middle of the night, or you can't stop thinking about it, or you have to keep reading other things about the subject that you're working on or whatever. That's good and I think that's necessary creatively.

Having a point to start is important. You know that when you decide to write something it's like a commitment. It's like falling in love.

I'm always working. If I'm not in my studio I become quite nervous.

I found some time ago that I have to be careful, while working on a novel, what I read.

Occasionally it does hit me, the words on a page. And I still love doing that, as I have for the last 60 years.

The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.

When I'm writing I just think there's only the page and me and nobody else.

When you're writing fiction or poetry... it really comes down to this: indifference to everything except what you're doing... A young writer could do worse than follow the advice given in those lines.

I obsess over things... especially my book projects. It can be very time consuming.

I can get obsessed by anything if I look at it long enough. That's the curse of being a photographer.

There comes a point when you're writing a novel when you're in it so deep that the life of the novel becomes more real to you than life itself. You have to write your way out of it; once you're there, it's too late to abandon.

I love painting so much that nothing else matters.