Quotes About Creativity

You have to understand that while I pre-plot the meta story of a given book, I often have no idea of what will happen on the next page, let alone the next chapter. That's what makes it fun for me; I write the books the same way many people read them.

The comic page is dying; I didn't want to go with it.

It's a discovery of a story when I write a book, a case of inching ahead on each page and discovering what's beyond in the darkness, beyond where you're writing.

It's just a matter of me opening up the page and whatever is written on the page, that's what I'm here to do.

When I'm working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm.

When I'm writing I just think there's only the page and me and nobody else.

It's hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115.

When I write I try as far as possible to forget I'm writing it at all. I tell it down onto the page, as if I'm telling it to one person only, my best friend.

Sometimes when you write something on the page, it can seem very funny, but when you act it out - and this happens to me a lot, actually - the melancholy of the situation becomes more front and center.

I explored rock culture and what the guitar can do though people like Jimmy Page and John McLaughlin, and the music moves away from pop.

I think writers have become hypnotised by the number of jokes on the page at the expense of character.

I've had experiences where I wasn't allowed to change words around at all because you have to say everything, exactly as written on the page. That's not fun for me. For me, part of being an actor is being able to contribute to a character's rhythms. If there's room to explore, you find a happy medium.

Some of the best rock riffs ever written were by Jimmy Page, and I can't really name the songs, but some of the stuff he did on his first and second records is beyond brilliant.

Blues, rock and hip hop are more about a lifestyle and culture than notes on a page.

What is it about the blank page that makes me want to hurl myself into a game of solitaire? I ask myself these kinds of questions while I'm playing solitaire.

Being an actor all of my life is kind of a collaborative, social form of interpretive art. Sitting down with a blank page every day by yourself is a different feeling.

One of the humbling things about having written more than one novel is the sense that every time you begin, that new empty page does not know who you are.

I like a lot of modern art. I like Chuck Close a lot. It doesn't necessarily directly influence the work I draw on the page.

The important thing for me as an artist is to keep going back to the page and doing what I do.

If I knew a story page by page before I started writing it, I just wouldn't do it. The process of discovery is really important for my own enjoyment.

All the really good guitar players - Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, or even Bert Jansch or John Martin - I love all those people. But I didn't start out thinking that I would be a guitar player. In the beginning, I played the guitar so I could sing. I mainly concentrated on my voice.

Confidence is highly overrated when it comes to creating literature. A writer who is overly confident will not engage in the struggle to get it exactly right on the page - but rather, will assume that she's getting it right without the struggle.

I am influenced by books which don't have their eye on the endgame, but which try to be entertaining on each and every page.

To tell you the truth, I don't edit much at all. Most times, when I have finished the first draft, that's the book. Of course, I work on the page I am on until I am happy with it. I might even say that I try to state the landscape.