Donald Miller Quotes

When you write, you are alone. It can be a bit of a shock later to discover that people have read what you've written!

Writing a book is incredibly pleasurable, but very solitary. You have total control, but sometimes that can drive you insane.

The challenge is always as a writer, is this going to work, because it's a very intimate process, and I tend to be very introverted and insular, and when I write, it's in my head.

I love writing. I've always written journals. I loved writing the book on living alone.

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is.

For me to write I have to be, a, alone, and b, know that nobody is going to question me. I write the way a thief steals; it's a little covert.

Sometimes if there's a book you really want to read, you have to write it yourself.

I wished I could be alone in my room, with my books, away from these people.

The act of writing itself is done in secret, like masturbation.

I carry around, like, a little journal with me and just write all the time. Not necessarily, like, actually sitting down and writing lyrics - just freeform writing, whatever's going on in my mind. I write a lot on airplanes, actually, because it's completely isolating.

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

Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.

My process is to be by myself when I record. It's quite an emotional performance to pull off when someone else is in the room. I prefer to go away and have my own time with it, bring it in later.

I started out life as a writer, and writers write in part because they don't want to talk.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

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.

If you're too scared to put your dreams, thoughts, desires, fantasies on paper and share them with the world, then being an author isn't the right career for you.

Once I was condemned to three months' absolute silence. As I could not speak, I wrote a book.

The one thing that makes writing a better pastime than reading is that you can make things turn out the way you want in the end!

When you write, no matter what, it ends up personal.

I've been writing poems since I was in the Navy - to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners.

When I'm doing sports, I don't feel anything at all. I enjoy the moment. It's a safe haven. But once you try to let someone inside your soul, you become vulnerable. You have to be comfortable in your own skin. I don't open myself up like that to a lot of people. It takes courage.

Much like film, authors spend a fair amount of time alone in the creative process, tossing their work out into what can feel like an abyss, void of real people.

When you're writing, it's a very solitary job. It's you and your word processor and a cup of tea.