For original ideas to come about, you have to let them percolate under the level of consciousness in a place where we have no way to make them obey our own desires or our own direction. Their random combinations are driven by forces we don't know about.
I have so little control over the act of writing that it's all I can do to remain conscious.
The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously, and those who have produced immortal works have done so without knowing how or why.
When the writing is really working, I think there is something like dreaming going on. I don't know how to draw the line between the conscious management of what you're doing and this state. . . . I would say that it's related to daydreaming. When I feel really engaged with a passage, I become so lost in it that I'm unaware of my real surroundings, totally involved in the pictures and sounds that that passage evokes.
The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.
The unconscious mind writes poetry if it's left alone.
In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.
I find that I have painted my life, things happening in my life - without knowing. After painting the shell and shingle many times, I did a misty landscape of the mountain across the lake, and the mountain became the shape of the shingle - the mountain I saw out my window, the shingle on the table in my room. I did not notice that they were alike for a long time after they were painted.
When I write a song today, basically it goes on the stage tomorrow. That's the way it works. You cannont interrupt your consciousness; it all comes from the subconscious, it can happen anywhere. It could be in a telephone booth.
I don't really analyze my stuff when I write. I write about stuff that I'm interested in, that I'm feeling at that particular time. When I stand back and look at the complete work, I might see themes that run through the whole film, but I'm not really conscious of it when I'm doing it.
Once it happened, as I lay awake at night, that I suddenly spoke in verses, in verses so beautiful and strange that I did not venture to think of writing them down, and then in the morning they vanished; and yet they lay hidden within me like the hard kernel within an old brittle husk.
I sit and I write automatically. I don't really try to write. My subconscious mind takes over and writes the songs for me. Songs come very easily for me. When I'm inspired, it takes me 20 minutes to write a song.
Sometimes the best ideas I have are in my bathtub or in my bed or in my dreams early in the morning before waking up ... I'm like a TV antennae, I catch it all and do it my way.
I think art, at its best, happens on a conscious and a subconscious level.
When I decide to write a story, I don't think too much about what I want it to be, I just let things come naturally and this is how it turns out. It's just how my subconscious works.
All of the good, weird stories I’ve written are based on things I’ve dredged out of my subconscious. That’s the real stuff. Everything else is fake.
When I start on a book, I have been thinking about it and making occasional notes for some time... So I have lots of theme, locale, subjects and technical ideas... I don't worry about long periods of not doing anything. I know my subconscious is busy.
The genius of man is hidden in the silent, settled state of mind from where every thought emerges.
First of all you are a writer, a writer is what you are, so it doesn't actually stop the moment you leave your desk, your computer, your keyboard, whatever. Something is operating the back of your mind.
The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer. And the joy of writing, when you're writing from your subconscious, is beautiful - it's thrilling. When you're editing, which is your conscious mind, it's like torture.
I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you're painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge.
The artist's knowledge of his own creative nature is often unconscious; he pursues his mysterious way of life in a strange innocence.
I work rather blindly. I have a theory that seems to work with me that some of the best things you ever do sort of come through you. You don't know where you get the impetus and response to what's before your eyes.
I wake up from dreams and go, 'Wow, put this down on paper'. The whole thing is strange. You hear the words, everything is right there in front of your face.
I've always been able to just concoct a melody quite easily - it's just kind of instinct, really. You've got to channel your subconscious.
