Martie Maguire Quotes

After 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' it took me a few months to shut out the world. I really had to turn off the Internet and sort of cloister myself away from the world again and sink into that psychic space to write again.

When I write I find a quiet place.

Although I've made notes for things and even written synopses sitting in trains or on park benches, for the complete composition of things I need absolute solitude, preferably an empty house.

There's nothing quite like a quiet corner in a coffee shop to gather your thoughts and begin writing.

I'm a long distance runner, and I get my best ideas when I'm out running. It also helps that I can't write it down immediately - if you hold onto an idea, other things will stick on it.

I have my best ideas when I am alone.

Twice a year, I take myself off to a self-imposed 'writer's retreat', staying at a small inn or on a friend's farm, where I am all alone and do nothing other than write.

I am in total silence when I write - I don't even like the sound of the dryer going - I like the quiet.

We'd have made more, but I kept forgetting to write songs down.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

To write, I think one must sit in one place and be bored. Boredom is a very good state for writers to be. Things cook away in your head when you're bored, and suddenly one day, you have a book or a germ of a book.

I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years.

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

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

I can write best in the silence and solitude of the night, when everyone has retired.

I like the busy-ness of office life. What I discovered, to my surprise, is that I love the solitary nature of writing. What happens is that you write when you're ready.

Composing demands a degree of isolation.

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.

Anyone who writes knows that ultimately the majority of your time is spent alone in a room with a piano or a guitar, no matter what the project is.

I often write either really early in the morning, or really late at night.

What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude.

The reason there's no modern-day Shakespeare is because he didn't have anything to do except sit in a room with a candle and think.

If I have a writing problem, the minute I step away, there's a solution.

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

I remember how I would wait for a play idea. I wasted a tremendous amount of time. I didn't realize that ideas could be made into movies or novels.