Hanya Yanagihara Quotes

I'm not a person who would get up at 5 A.M. to write, but I could sacrifice my Friday night and just order in dinner, sit at home and get into it.

I write about two hours a day, and I write in fits and spurts - 45 minutes here, a half-hour there - and when I get stuck, which happens often, I take the dogs for a walk. But during the time when I'm not actually writing, I'm thinking.

I knew I could control one thing, and that is my time and my hours and my effort and my efficiency.

When I start a book, I write a minimum of five pages every day, except weekends. If I'm going on a ski trip, I take my computer with me, get up at six, do my five pages, and then go skiing.

I spent two months on the first draft, working 8 hours a day, five days a week.

I'm a morning person because I learned to write my novels while still practicing law. I would get to the office at 6:30 a.m. and write until other people arrived, around 9. Now I still do that. I start at 6:30 or 7, and I'll write until 11, then take an hour off, then work until about 2 p.m. By then my brain has had enough.

I can do a book in three months if I spend all day, seven days a week at it and, in fact, I work better that way.

A writer needs to write, period. He or she can't wait for the muse, shouldn't need peace and quiet, and isn't entitled to perfect conditions or the perfect spot.

Every day I'm not working or writing is a wasted day to me.

You have to protect your writing time. You have to protect it to the death.

Be ruthless about protecting writing days.

You’ve gotta keep control of your time, and you can’t unless you say no. You can’t let people set your agenda in life.

When I am directing, it is much, much, much, much, much different. I'm a much more practical person in the world, I show up on time, I am very rigorous about scheduling, and I am very focused. But when I'm writing I am just a big, irresponsible mess and I'm just impossible to get in touch with, and I don't spend time with friends.

I write pretty fast, probably faster than most people. But I might think about something for six hours, then write it in 20 minutes. So did I write for six hours and 20 minutes, or just 20 minutes? I used to write absolutely every day, except for days when I had to travel or something.

As much as I've produced it looks to people like I must have written quickly, but it isn't that - because I put in in a sixty- or seventy-hour week.

When I'm really plugged in I find it difficult to write. It's like digging a well. If you make a void, something moves in to fill it. Writing books is like that. It's mostly about freeing up time, doing nothing, and in that time some writing starts to happen. We need to figure out how to maintain those voids.

Donald Trump probably spends more time getting more things done than many people have any experience with, but yet he's the one undisciplined, he's the one that's haphazard, he's the one who's erratic, he's the one who's unpredictable.

Business before pleasure.

Best productivity tool ever invented? Easy...the word "no".

Choose your tools carefully, but not so carefully that you get uptight or spend more time at the stationery store than at your writing table.

I actually didn't want to have control of the writing on my first album. To write, you have to have time to connect with yourself. I don't have that time right now, because I'm so busy.

I don't listen to music for fun. I ain't got enough time for fun! I'm always busy writing my own music. I don't try to compete or see what other people are doing.

I think the best advice I got was to not worry about what other people would think while you were working on your first draft. Focus on getting it out of your head. You can always edit the manuscript later.

I think that very often younger writers don't appreciate how much hard work is involved in writing. The part of writing that's magic is the thinnest rind on the world of creation. Most of a writer's life is just work. It happens to be a kind of work that the writer finds fulfilling in the same way that a watchmaker can happily spend countless hours fiddling over the tiny cogs and bits of wire. ... I think the people who end up being writers are people who don't get bored doing that kind of tight focus in small areas.

Don’t let people interfere with you. Boot ’em out, turn off the phone, hide away, get it done. If you carry a short story over to the next day you may overnight intellectualize something about it and try to make it too fancy, try to please someone.