Will Self Quotes

I have a basic indolence about me which is essential to writing. ... It's thinking time, it's hanging-out time, it's daydreaming time. You know, it's lie-around-the-bed time, it's sitting-like-a-dope-in-your-chair time. And that seems to me essential to any work.

Loafing is the most productive part of a writer's life.

Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity.

It is generally recognized that creativity requires leisure, an absence of rush, time for the mind and imagination to float and wander and roam, time for the individual to descend into the depths of his or her psyche, to be available to barely audible signals rustling for attention. Long periods of time may pass in which nothing seems to be happening. But we know that kind of space must be created if the mind is to leap out of its accustomed ruts, to part from the mechanical, the known, the familiar, the standard, and generate a leap into the new.

We owe most of our great inventions and most of the achievements of genius to idleness either enforced or voluntary.

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.

Being lazy does not mean that you do not create. In fact, lying around doing nothing is an important, nay crucial, part of the creative process. It is meaningless bustle that actually gets in the way of productivity. All we are really saying is, give peace a chance.

I suddenly realised, hey, I'm not a lazy idiot, I'm an idler! It's something to aspire to, it's part of the creative process! That's fantastic!

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness - to save oneself trouble.

For most people, creativity is a serious business. They forget the telling phrase 'the play of ideas' and think that they need to knuckle down and work more. Often, the reverse is true. They need to play.

I do some of my best work when I'm dead.

I found that pottering is very conducive to my creative process, so now, I find myself being incredibly creative because I've got such much to procrastinate with.

I think one of the most important things for creativity is boredom.

In producers, loafing is productive; and no creator, of whatever magnitude, has ever been able to skip that stage, any more than a mother can skip gestation.

Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on the stoop and staring at the tedious blue of the summer sky. I don't believe you can write poetry, or compose music, or become an actor without downtime, and plenty of it, a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity.

Psychologists call it "defocused attention," where you broaden your horizons, let your mind float and drift a bit. Coffee keeps us sharp and alert. It's great if you're driving at 3 o'clock in the morning. It's not so great if you're trying to come up with the next violin concerto.

On rides you see things that trigger ideas. And most the time it's just not doing anything but riding ... letting it all go.

Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do.

Talent works, genius creates.

He lives with his creativity in high gear.

Idleness allows you to turn a situation from boredom to pleasure.

I have no philosophy, my favourite thing is sitting in the studio.

Weirdly, often the more I write, the more ideas I have.

I'm a very restless person. I'm always doing something. The creative process never stops.

I hibernate. I hibernate until the next project takes shape in my mind.