John D'Agata Quotes

When I sit down to write, I just let the goose out of the bottle.

I'll have periods when I write and periods when I don't. But you don't want it to become a discipline, really. If it becomes a discipline, it becomes a chore, and that's no good. To make art you need to be inspired.

I live for the blank page.

When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.

I continue to write. It's just one of those things that I do. I'll have periods when I write and periods when I don't. But you don't want it to become a discipline really. If it becomes a discipline, it becomes a chore and that's no good.

Write what you love and love what you write.

You just have to keep getting out of your own way so that whatever it is that wants to be written can use you to write it.

If you want to write, keep cats.

I'm not a big believer in disciplined writers. What does discipline mean? The writer who forces himself to sit down and write for seven hours every day might be wasting those seven hours if he's not in the mood and doesn't feel the juice. I don't think discipline equals creativity.

I was in a crazy, private, awesome bubble again, and that's when I started to write.

I actually didn't want to have control of the writing on my first album. To write, you have to have time to connect with yourself. I don't have that time right now, because I'm so busy.

The imagination is unleashed by constraints. You break out of the box by stepping into shackles.

I write whatever shows up. That's good enough for me. I'm part of the first generation that wants to still do original material and not tour around as an oldies act.

I always wanted to be a writer, but Alan Moore's work and help inspired me to write comics. In some ways the biggest influence on me writing was Punk. There was the idea that you could do something by simply doing it.

Play and write music the way you want the world to be.

When we are writing, or painting, or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions, and are opened to a wider world, where colors are brighter, sounds clearer, and people more wondrously complex than we normally realize.

Here's the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can't tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there'd be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don't you hate that? I love that there's no map.

It's nice to really have the freedom to write what I want.

Write what you want to read. The person you know best in this world is you. Listen to yourself. If you are excited by what you are writing, you have a much better chance of putting that excitement over to a reader.

I want to tell stories, I don't really try to get boxed in by a specific genre.

Writer’s block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.

One must not imitate what one wants to create.

You can find truly original pieces of writing, but they're original because you go, "Who would have even have thought of that?," or, "Why would anyone ever want to go see that?"

Read at the level at which you want to write. Reading is the nourishment that feeds the kind of writing you want to do.

The only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost.