Gerald Brenan Quotes

It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its impression on all his performances.

They say to just write about what's happening in your backyard because that's where you find the most creativity. It's in the DNA of the show. There's no question.

Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that's really it. In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing.

I'm dependent on writing for a living, so really it's to my advantage to understand how the creative process works. One of the problems is, when you start to do that, in effect you're going to have to step off the edge of science and rationality.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

Ideas come through us, not from us.

What I do is write, and I try to write as closely as I can into what I call 'the mystery.'

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

That's the beauty of creativity. It comes from the ether. I like to think, sometimes, it's like I haven't written it, it's more like I just reached up and grabbed it from somewhere. That song, 'Song of the Red Rock Mountain,' is one of them. I recorded it and thought, 'Where did that come from?'

I don't think I really invented anybody. I have drawn on real life.

The great songs just come out. If it comes quick, just leave it that way.

No, it's not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

I discovered Einstein said the same thing about his celebrated theories of relativity that writers say about their work when he said he didn't have any feelings of personal possession of these ideas. Once they were out there, they came from somewhere else. And that's exactly the feeling when you write. You don't feel possessive about it.

There is no scientific discoverer, no poet, no painter, no musician, who will not tell you that he found ready made his discovery or poem or picture - that it came to him from outside, and that he did not consciously create it from within.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that writing is mysterious; you don't ever truly know where it is coming from, so don't edit yourself line by line. Don't get in your own way. Whatever is truly there at the core, that is your voice.

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

I wanted to create a body of work that I was proud of. It's come from honesty and integrity, without forcing anything from myself, the ideas had to come instinctively and organically. Whether that translates to people in that way, it's kind of out of my hands now.

It's pretty rare that something I've written is close to something that's pre-existed.

I think, what happened with 'Dead Silence' is that other people told us that we should be doing that and now that I look back, I realize, 'should' is not a word that comes into an art. It's whatever you're feeling like doing.

I don't particularly look at other artists when I'm working. But references do come into my work intuitively.

In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of.

I don't claim anything of the work. It is his work. I am like a little pencil in his hand. That is all. He does the thinking. He does the writing. The pencil has nothing to do with it.

Sometimes I think creativity is magic; it's not a matter of finding an idea, but allowing the idea to find you.

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No - I must keep my own style & go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.