Rabih Alameddine Quotes

I have to have music on when writing, or else the silence swallows me whole.

I keep social with everyone because I want to know what's going on at every level. At the same time, if I'm not alone a certain amount of time per day then I'll go nuts, because I can't write and I can't think. I can't deal with people all the time. I like being alone. I'm a bit of a cat lady in that way.

I wrote 'Criminal' in 45 minutes when everyone else went to lunch because I had to have a hit. I can force myself to do the work, but only if someone is right up behind me.

I think it's always an adjustment for me, but I do feel like, ultimately, I can kind of write anywhere. It just takes a second to get back in to the groove.

I rarely listen to music while writing. If I don't like it, it bothers me, and if I like it, it absorbs me so much I can't write.

I've always thought it was important not to attach too much superstition to the space where you're writing, because once you get into the mindset that you can only do it a certain way in a certain place, your creativity can get blocked.

Writing-wise, I like to have a lot of things on the burners at once, because when I hit a wall, I like to move on to the thing I haven't hit a wall on.

I wish I could write easily. I'm one of those guys who's visited by the muse when things are dire.

I find that when I write, I need things to be quiet, but when I design, I can't bear it if it's quiet.

A creative space is an important thing. There are so many studios that feel like doctor's offices in Nashville. I couldn't write there.

I never get writer's block, but I do have days where I crawl under the duvet.

I wrote 'Show Me the Way' in the morning and wrote 'Baby, I Love Your Way' in the afternoon of the same day. I've been trying to figure out what I ate for breakfast that morning ever since!

I never listen to music when I write. It's too much of a distraction.

I write a lot when I'm feeling bummed, but other times, you get locked in, and it's totally personal. If you're really low and writing, you're not thinking about anybody at all.

I'm not really worried about writer's block.

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

Never believe anything you think about yourself as a writer when you're not writing.

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.

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.

a novelist's chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He has to induce in himself a state of perpetual lethargy. He wants life to proceed with the utmost quiet and regularity. He wants to see the same faces, to read the same books, to do the same things day after day, month after month, while he is writing, so that nothing may break the illusion in which he is living - so that nothing may disturb or disquiet the mysterious nosings about, feelings around, darts, dashes, and sudden discoveries of that very shy and illusive spirit, the imagination.

When I feel that something I'm writing is going well, everything in my life is good and the things in my life that aren't good are completely manageable. If it's not going well, Miss America could be standing there in a swimsuit handing me a nobel price and I wouldn't be happy about it

I tend to write first thing, and then do my drawing later. I like to draw at night. But often I go for long stretches without drawing, because I'm trying to figure out what I'm writing.

Left to it's own devices, writing is like weather. It has a drama, a form, a force to it that shapes the day. Just as good rain clears the air, a good writing day clears the psyche. There is something very right about simply letting yourself write. And the way to do that is to begin, to begin where you are.

What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?

Better to write twaddle, anything, than nothing at all.