Dorothea Brande Quotes

Composing demands a degree of isolation.

I like writing in total isolation like out in the woods somewhere.

All I want is to be left alone to write my books.

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

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

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

You want to read a book? That requires introspection. It requires time away from people and time away from the constant need to communicate and to connect.

I could type in a closet and be fine. It's just a matter of cocooning myself. Just me and the story.

Probably nothing serious or worthwhile can be accomplished without one's willingness to be alone for sustained periods of time, which is not to say that one must live alone, obsessively.

It's an amazing feeling to go into a studio and really be alone.

I would love to stay alone when I'm creating.

My life is routine. I wake up early in the morning. I brush my teeth. I sit on the floor of the cell I do not go to breakfast. I stare at a gray cement wall. I keep my legs crossed my back straight my eyes forward. I take deep breaths in and out, in and out, and I try not to move. I sit for as long as I can I sit until everything hurts I sit until everything stops hurting I sit until I lose myself in the gray wall I sit until my mind becomes as blank as the gray wall. I sit and I stare and I breathe. I sit and I stare. I breathe.

Nothing will change the fact that I cannot produce the least thing without absolute solitude.

To have the ability to withdraw into oneself and forget everything around one when one is creating - What, I think is the only requirement for being able to bring forth something beautiful. The whole thing is - a mystery.

Solitude never hurt anyone. Emily Dickinson lived alone, and she wrote some of the most beautiful poetry the world has ever known... then went crazy as a loon." Lisa Simpson

Something amazing happens when the rest of the world is sleeping. I am glued to my chair. I forget that I ever wanted to do anything but write. The crowded city, the crowded apartment, and the crowded calendar suddenly seem spacious. Three or four hours pass in a moment; I have no idea what time it is, because I never check the clock. If I chose to listen, I could hear the swish of taxis bound for downtown bars or the soft saxophone riffs that drift from a neighbor's window, but nothing gets through. I am suspended in a sensory deprivation tank, and the very lack of sensation is delicious.

One must withdraw for a time from life in order to set down that picture.

Okay, everyone please be completely quiet, because I can literally hear a whisper, and it’ll throw off my stream of consciousness, and when I get my stream of consciousness going that’s when I give the best, illest quotes. Literally, a whisper can throw it off.

You can write anytime people will leave you alone and not interrupt you.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

I'm pretty social so it's hard for me to find solitude, but I need to have solitude to write.

At night I can write for hours.