Quotes About Process

I don't work with an outline, writing a story is like crossing a stream--now I'm on this rock, now I'm on this rock, now I'm on this rock. In the context of a story, a fairly boring thought in a character's head can work better than a brilliant one, and a brilliantly laid-out structure can be so much worse for a story than one that is more haphazard.

It takes between three and six hours to make each snowball, depending on snow quality. Wet snow is quick to work with but also quick to thaw, which can lead to a tense journey to the cold store.

If you ever decide to build a boat out of wet newspaper, it's important to remember to lay down the sheets like shingles on a house: One issue at a time, starting at the bow and moving aft, so water flows over the layers, not under them.

I don't hate the music, but I hate the process. When I look at it, I don't see song titles and artwork, I see the fight - I see the emotions, the blood, sweat and tears. There are a couple of songs on there that I love; but 'Lasers' is a little bit of what you love, a little bit of what you like, and a lot of what you had to do.

The importance of art is in the process of doing it, in the learning experience where the artist interacts with whatever is being made.

Sometimes the wheels of justice grind slowly.

We've seen, time and again, when people focus on the outcome rather than what needs to be done to achieve a desirable result, then the wheels fall off.

The record company stay out of my way. Whenever the record is finished, they take it.

I never force nothing in my game. I let everything come whenever it needed to come. That's the beauty of it.

I don't have a special place or ritual for writing songs, basically I write songs whenever an idea hits me, in my hotel room, on the road, in the plane.

You can't skip a step and assume you're going to get to where you want to be.

Writing on a computer feels like a recipe for writer's block. I can type so fast that I run out of thoughts, and then I sit there and look at the words on the screen, and move them around, and never get anywhere. Whereas in a notebook I just keep plodding along, slowly, accumulating sentences, sometimes even surprising myself.

Each song has its own secret that's different from another song, and each has its own life. Sometimes it has to be teased out, whereas other times it might come fast. There are no laws about songwriting or producing. It depends on what you're doing, not just who you're doing.

Inflammatory passion and selfish interest characterizes most men, whereas ambition characterizes men who pursue and hold national office. Such men rise from the people through a process of self-selection, since politics is a dirty business that discourages all but the most ambitious.

I'll just start laying out the melody exactly where I want it to fall. And then I'll go back and fill it out. Whereas, in other pieces I'm really just going a couple bars at a time.

Well, to be honest I think I'm a better short story writer than a novelist. Novels I find very hard, hours and hours, weeks and weeks, of conscious thought - whereas short stories slip out painlessly in a few days.

Screenwriting is always about what people say or do, whereas good writing is about a thought process or an abstract image or an internal monologue, none of which works on screen.

A lot of directors want to storyboard you, whereas the best way to get a performance out of an actor is a collaborative process where you listen to the actor's input.

I always thought I'd eventually learn how to draw really well, and despite constant evidence to the contrary, I just kept on trying. If you're too good at anything, you don't have to think about the process, whereas I feel like I spend my life with my head under the bonnet, trying to understand how everything works.

Movies take a long time because movies take a long damn time to put work into. Whereas music, you don't have as much time. I didn't realize that.

Outlier' came together pretty quickly. There's no real telling why that happens, sometimes the thing is just more intricate and takes longer you know, there's actual labour to be done in terms of sound design whereas other things are much freer.

I realized I had a novel on my hands, but didn't know where it was going to go. So I thought, 'I'm going to do everything that you're not supposed to do when you plan a novel; I'm going to step back and let this thing take itself wherever it wants to go, and I'm not going to worry about how things connect until later on.'

Conflict is good in a negotiation process... it's the clash of two ideas, which then, all being well, produces a third idea.

I often make films about subjects I don't really know much about. Maybe it's laziness, but I don't go in there having done a tonne of research; the research happens while I'm making the film.