Michael LeBoeuf Quotes

I usually write things in my head before I ever write them down. When I write it out, usually I've already figured out what it is I'm trying to do.

Dirac politely refused Robert's [Robert Oppenheimer] two proffered books: reading books, the Cambridge theoretician announced gravely, "interfered with thought."

If I was going to write something, I'd need to stop for three months and just see if I had any thoughts in there.

When I write notes in my journal, I'm just trying to scribble down as much as possible. Later on, I decide whether to follow some of those first impressions or whether to abandon them.

Paper acts as an eraser on the mind, as soon as you look at what you've written.

Ideas? My head is full of them, one after the other, but they serve no purpose there. They must be put down on paper, one after the other.

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

It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work.

I can write two scripts concurrently, but I usually prefer to do one at a time. However, I also usually have 5 or 6 story ideas that are percolating in my head at any one time, so it can get a little crowded in there.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast - talk them or write them down.

My favourite part of writing a book is thinking up the ideas, and that can start a long time before I actually sit down at my desk.

I have notebooks and sketchbooks for ideas. I also have drawers full of envelopes covered in quick outlines, scenes or scraps of dialogue that I don't want to forget. I tend to grab whatever's to hand and just get the thing down before it's lost. It's not what you would call a streamlined system.

By the time I sit down ready to write, I've done a lot of longhand and a lot of note collecting along the way.

I find a lot of writing happens when you're not actually at the computer. So I carry a notebook.

I have this belief that if you have an idea, and you have to write it down to remember it, then it can't be a great idea.

I always write after I think for quite a long time, so the actual writing time is rather short. I think a lot of the work gets done when you have something on your mind while you're doing many other things.

Your mind simply can't focus forward and downward all at the same time.

My process is thinking, thinking and thinking - thinking about my stories for a long time.

I throw ideas out into the open when I really should just be writing them down in a journal.

I write on big yellow legal pads - ideas in outline form when I'm doing stand-up and stuff. It's vivid that way. I can't type it into an iPad - I think that would put a filter into the process.

While driving to work, I'll choose to think about a particular subject rather than just have random thought streams landing on one subject or another. For example, I might think about the structure of an opinion. Or I might think about the first sentence of an opinion, refining it.

My thinking process starts with my pen.

Writing, for me, is an extension of thinking - it's my way of processing, and only when I've gotten something down on the page have I thought through it fully.

Without a pen in my hand I can't think.

I have a shoebox: for ideas, fragments, snatches of conversation I hear. I scrawl it down, throw the scraps in the box. Every time I start a new script I start picking through the pieces. Suddenly you get five pieces together and think: this is almost the first Act of a movie, if I flesh it out a bit.