Dan Auerbach Quotes

My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do.

No thesaurus can give you those words, no rhyming dictionary. They must happen out of you.

The writing part of my life never changes, because that's just when the inspiration comes.

I never thought I'd be a writer. I never thought I'd be able to read a book, let alone write one. So if books like this inspire kids to write, or even read a whole book, I think it's good.

I think a lot of making art is listening to yourself.

I don't outline; I listen to a kind of whisper inside the material.

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

I just let the character speak to me and things appear.

Art comes from a visceral need and is usually generated by something I have seen; writing comes from something that happens in my head and my heart.

I think my characters with my fingers, I think my characters with my guts. But when I say I think them, that is what I do, I feel them with the sympathetic neurons and I work out with my brain what it is that I am trying to write about, or I can't do it.

I always like to write where I'm at in real life into whatever I'm working on.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

I write stories that are already in the air, and I think it's important to have the correct listening device to tune in to that frequency.

I don't believe you just create a character out of thin air, there's always something of yourself you bring.

I always feel my work is a chemical reaction between me and the world, wherever I happen to be.

I have to sit alone in a room and be alone with my own thoughts. It always starts with an idea, and once the idea grows, I have a concept of what I want to say, and once I go out there and start feeling the energy, that concept grows and becomes whatever it is.

People have talents that are different. Where does the creative flow come from - inside us or from a higher power? I don't ask any questions. I just write it down.

As authors, we know that it is very difficult to unleash one's creativity.

Storytelling wasn't about making things up. It was more like inviting the stories to come through her, let themselves be told.

Inspiration cannot be willed, though it can be wooed.

Making up characters and places and plots, unlike fixing your plumbing or doing dishes, is anything but practical or rational. I write what needs to be written the way that seems genuinely right.

I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

What I wanted to hear didn't exist, so it was necessary for me to go out and create it.

For me, inspiration isn't a sort of spark which lights the fire of the story. It's more like a thread, one of many, which you can tease out of a story once it's written, if you feel so inclined.