Denise Mina Quotes

When I act, I come away drained. When I write, I come away energized.

For me, drawing is a question of death and life. Every day I draw, I write, I do something.

I'm a storyteller - that's my chamber, that's my box. I'm always tryin' to give you the best story from our side of the table that you could really relate to quick. I understand where I wanna be at, but sometimes the production takes me where I need to go.

I got the acting bug back because I felt like all of a sudden maybe after all these years, maybe I might have something to offer again. I walked away from it after 'Signs' because I just felt I was a bit stale and it wasn't ringing my bells, so I focused on directing, writing and producing.

Like all artists, I go through creative spurts.

My cure for writer's block is to step away from the thing I'm stuck on, usually a novel, and write something totally different. Besides fiction, I write poetry, screenplays, essays and journalism. It's usually not the writing itself that I'm stuck on, but thing I'm trying to write. So I often have four or five things going at once.

It was only after I began to write fiction that I found a way to connect with painting.

Shorter work - personal essays and book reviews - allow me to take a break from working on a book, which is good for the book and for its author.

I've always got a novel under way, but if I try to work on it every day, exclusively, I falter. So I always keep more than one thing going.

Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can.

But, yeah, I'm really happy when I'm writing. When I'm being creative and when I have something that I can put down. You know, if you go out and you overhear a conversation or you have a thought, you have a receptacle to go home and say, 'Oh, this would be great in this script.' Your antenna's out in a different way, and I love that time.

I like writing, and I enjoy it. It's painful. You can't get around the pain of writing. I'm still trying to balance on what I think is my creative habit. It varies, but I do know that I need to continue. It helps me with my acting, and the writing helps me be invested in a different way.

I've never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.

I think as long as I have a creative outlet, I'm happy.

Writing 'Rainwater' was a refreshing change of pace... a change of everything, in fact.

As in a love affair, two creative people can destroy themselves trying to recapture that youthful spirit, at twenty-one or twenty-four, of creating without even being aware of how it's happening

I gotta pound the keys for the ideas to flow.

I love the freedom of writing and then I love the realization of directing. I can't favor one or the other. I enjoy both parts of the process.

I just like to stay creative. Anything that can keep my mind going.

I'm going to put every aspect of myself out into the world and try to convey it through photography.

I find it painful when I'm without anything. But I work in multiple fields. If I can't write, I find myself taking photographs. I can go on the road and perform. But the most important thing for me is writing, and when I hit those walls, it's painful.

I mean, the great thing about being an actor is you can investigate parts of your brain that might have otherwise gone dormant.

It's only an interim trip. I love the music, but it's really giving me a way in which I can comfortably explore my art.

My trouble is I'm the sort of writer who only finds out what he's getting at by the time he's got to the end of it.

A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.