Quotes About Inspiration

I eat broccoli. I think about the plot. I pace in circles for hours, counter-clockwise, listening to music. I try to think of one detail in the scene I'm about to write that I'm really excited about writing. Until I can come up with that one detail, I pace.

There is no 'right' way to begin a novel, but for me, plot has to wait. The character comes first.

Sometimes, by using the most over-the-top, ridiculous plot device you can imagine, you get some interesting little conflicts and cool things that you might not otherwise have a chance to explore.

You don't idea your way into a plot but plot your way into an idea.

I always wanted to, at some point, sit down and consider how to plot out one piece of work, one album, from start to finish.

I don't give plots to Harold Robbins or Graham Greene, because they don't need them, but a lot of authors do.

I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.

I always like to think of music as if you were to turn the picture off, actually. Just by listening to the piece of music, there's a story there and a connection to the characters and the plots and all of that.

Storylines are how characters create the plots involved in their stories.

The same way that some people can play the piano, I can do plots! They just come!

I don't really write plots. I use history as the engine that drives everything.

When I'm writing, I don't read much crime at all - you don't want to get distracted by other people's plots.

I'm real bent on dialogue. I'm just a little bit crazy and when you put that along with 20 years as a criminal lawyer, it's pretty easy to come up with some interesting plots.

I always tell my students to seek out other writers as models, and though it took me years to heed my own advice, it really was life-altering when I found writers who wrote long stories, full of back story and side plots and sub-histories.

I was commissioned to write some romantic fiction, and I really liked doing those, and they were very instructive in terms of building characters and plots. But it never felt right for me.

I thought at first that I might write mysteries, but then I said, 'Mysteries have plots, and I'm not sure I can do that yet.'

Certain personal issues forced me stay away from movies for a while but that does not mean I was idle and cut away from cinema. It was during that break that I wrote two books and found the time to dream about new scripts and plots.

I'm thinking about color all the time. Sometimes even as far back as the plotting sequence.

Poetry taught me a great deal about language and images, but when it came to plotting, I was stumped. It's been very much a learn-by-doing thing for me.

Sometimes I'm asked if I do research for my stories. The answer is yes and no. No, in the sense that I seldom plow through books at the library to gather material. Yes, in the sense that the first fifteen years of my life turned out to be one big research project.

But, on the other hand, if Schubert were alive today, he would find even richer fields to plow.

The poor are an especially important resource for innovation when they have the bravery and pluck to get out of the poor places in which they're living.

I plug into a lot of old rock & roll. Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis - I love all that stuff.

I like to just plug in and play; I don't use a lot of effects.