Rose Tremain Quotes

When I'm writing I don't dream much; it's like the dreaming gets used in the writing.

The unconscious mind writes poetry if it's left alone.

In making movies, time is so short-because it is so expensive-that we tend to neglect the place from which the best ideas come, namely that part of ourselves that dreams. The unconscious is our best collaborator.

None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.

It is the mystery of the creative act that something other than our conscious self takes over.

Sometimes I think creativity is magic; it's not a matter of finding an idea, but allowing the idea to find you.

You know a trillion times more about art than me. But I’ve learned that it isn’t necessary to know all that much. You just make what you wanna see, right? It’s a game, right? It’s like being paid for dreaming.

Writing is like meditation or going into an ESP trance, or prayer. Like dreaming. You are tapping into your unconscious. To be fully conscious and alert, with life banging and popping and cuckooing all around, you are not going to find your way to your subconscious, which is a place of complete submission.

You either have an imaginative mind or you don't. All of my writing is God-given. I don't write my stories - they write themselves.

I try not to get analytical in the writing process. I try to just kind of keep the flow from my brain to my hand as far as the pen is concerned and go with the moment and go with my guts.

I get lost in my right brain, especially in creative things.

I'm dependent on writing for a living, so really it's to my advantage to understand how the creative process works. One of the problems is, when you start to do that, in effect you're going to have to step off the edge of science and rationality.

I consider creativity to be a more non-rational, subconscious thing. You have a relationship to your creativity - you can feed it with content, with some rational prodding and sleep and things like that, but the mechanisms by which your creativity work are largely unknown.

All stories come from the subconscious - which is why it doesn't make sense to over-plan.

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

That's the beauty of creativity. It comes from the ether. I like to think, sometimes, it's like I haven't written it, it's more like I just reached up and grabbed it from somewhere. That song, 'Song of the Red Rock Mountain,' is one of them. I recorded it and thought, 'Where did that come from?'

The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me.

Inspiration doesn't really work like that - you're not looking out for it. Inspiration is something that tends to capture you rather than you capture it.

One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come.

It hinders the creative work of the mind if the intellect examines too closely the ideas as they pour in.

Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.

I dream a lot. I do more painting when I'm not painting. It's in the subconscious.