Elizabeth Berg Quotes

I never listen to music when I write. It's too much of a distraction.

I can't listen to music while writing - any such distraction would have dreadful consequences.

I think we've all been in the middle of doing something we cared about, when someone coming in the room and saying 'hello' was annoying. I personally can understand that, as someone who tries to create.

I don't listen to music when I write - I find it distracting.

I have a gorgeous office at home but tend not to write there because there are so many distractions.

You cannot just be working in a vast, air-conditioned loft space and think you are going to make a decent painting. Francis Bacon had a special studio built, and he felt completely emasculated in there. I have to be somewhere comfortable.

I probably write best in my office, which is an extra bedroom in my house.

I'm a believer that you shouldn't really talk about the drawing until you're done with the drawing.

I rarely listen to music while writing. I wish I could, but it distracts me.

I'm not one of those who can listen to music and write. I need the door closed. Windows shut. Facing the wall. No birds tweeting, views of nature, and so forth.

There's no writer's block; there's only distraction.

When you in the studio you don't need everybody calling your phone telling you about what's going on outside the studio. I don't need those distractions.

Mostly, isolation allows me to go through a period where I really concentrate and get in a flow. Sometimes the whole process can be daunting, and when you're away from it, thinking about going back to it is especially daunting. If I go away for a week, I can be working on 10 songs at once, just jumping around to each one. I can get a month's worth of work done.

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and is it is cool and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit again.

Animation requires a great deal of concentration, and I preferred to work alone because then I'm not deterred by somebody asking me if I want coffee, or the phone ringing or something.

Thinking is the activity I love best, and writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers. I can write up to 18 hours a day. Typing 90 words a minute, I've done better than 50 pages a day. Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up-well, maybe once.

My place in London is very small, so a piano would take up a third of the room. I leave home in the morning when I'm there and go to my studio. I close the door, and it's soundproof. There's no phone or TV or computer, and I can work uninterruptedly. That has been a huge advantage over the years.

Sometimes I am glad I am not a philosopher - how would I ever complete a single chain of thought when someone is constantly asking me to do something? I don't think Plato would have been able to write his dialogues if he had a wife who kept bugging him to pass the pita bread.

If the artist's will is not strong he will see all kinds of unessential things.

Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.

For me the process works best with no interruptions, no breaks in the steady application, no letters to be answered, very little social life, no holidays; it is therefore a form of happy imprisonment.

I have all these computers and keyboards and synthesizers, and I rattle away. For instance, with The Lion King I wrote over four hours worth of tunes, and they were really pretty -but totally meaningless. So in the end I came up with material I liked. We worked on The Lion King for four years, but I wasn't toying until the last three-and-a-half weeks properly. On Crimson Tide, on the other hand, I just went in and within seconds I knew what I wanted.

I'm not going to hang out with celebrities, I'm not going to parties. I have two songs due for Moana next week, and I'm going to go and spend some time with Maui and Moana in the ocean, in my mind.

It's annoying when you've got a guitar and you're working on music and then you have to go and do the shopping or someone calls your mobile and you get distracted or you have to go out and do something. So it's nice to just concentrate on it one hundred percent and give your all to it.

You can't be blocked if you just keep on writing words. Any words. People who get 'blocked' make the mistake of thinking they have to write good words.