Tony Kushner Quotes

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

When you're writing, you're in a totally different zone... I can start a difficult poem and look up at the clock and see to my astonishment that three hours have passed.

Music inspires me and puts me in the right mood, but to actually listen to it when I write - I find it gets in the way.

For a long time, I would write without music, because I thought it was distracting until I appreciated that it actually unlocks a certain unconscious productivity vault in my mind.

Sometimes I write with music on, and if I'm in a good flow, I don't even hear it.

It makes it harder to write if I watch a lot of television, because television is not like a written story.

I rarely listen to music while writing. I wish I could, but it distracts me.

I've tried writing with music on, but I find it distracting.

When I write, I wear earplugs. I don't want to be self-conscious. I don't want to be thinking about the fact that I'm thinking about it. I just want to be in it. It's one element of hypnosis.

Unless I'm really uneasy with what I'm writing, I lose interest very quickly.

I work via the high-tension-wire method, which is maybe going for long periods without writing while the tension builds up - when am I going to write this, am I going to be able to write this, what is this image about - and I'm thinking about it all the time, but I'm not really inside it, inside the writing.

I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block.

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.

I think I wrote 'The Trysting Place' in about three weeks. But it was inexperience that made me have to do that. I didn't feel good about the book all the time I was writing it. It felt a bit like wading through molasses.

I never listen to music when I write.

I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.

One constant writing ritual, no matter what I'm writing, is that I cannot write if people are around me. It wigs me out - the idea that someone is reading as I'm writing stuff.

To say that I have an undisciplined mind would not be incorrect overall, but it's a little off the mark because I have great discipline when I write - but only for about ten minutes.

I think we've all been in the middle of doing something we cared about, when someone coming in the room and saying 'hello' was annoying. I personally can understand that, as someone who tries to create.

At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.

I wrote my second novel, 'A Little Life,' in what I still think of as a fever dream: For 18 months, I was unable to properly concentrate on anything else.

Writing requires the concentration of the writer, demands that nothing else be done except that.

I don't listen to music when I write - I find it distracting.

Composing demands a degree of isolation.

I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.