James Laughlin Quotes

I sometimes don't try to invent something. I wait for some kind of a direction - and it happens. I get an angle, for instance, and it just appears, and I say, 'Oh my God - that's it!'

Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what's wrong with it.

Inspiration is some mysterious blessing which happens when the wheels are turning smoothly.

The best I can do is, it's like a 'ding!' You're writing, and then something starts falling into place, and you hear or feel a ding. And it just feels - it's going to be okay.

The creative process is mysterious; a conversation, a ride in the car, or a melody can trigger something.

It's a strange thing, but you get this click in your brain; the wonderful feeling that the entirety of a character is suddenly available and accessible to you.

My insights come in periods of working. There are wonderful moments of surprise, but I'm superstitious enough not to want to talk about them.

I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me.

You don't actually have ideas; ideas have you.

I don't know how to explain it, but when you're working on something constantly, and you're digging in deep, things kind of fall in, and you grab them, and you're like, 'That one!' and 'That thing!' and it starts to build something right.

An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.

A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.

To me, the question of inspiration is an exercise in hindsight. The truth is, inspiration is mysterious at the time. I don't think it's ever a rational process.

The great discoveries are usually obvious.

I always say, and I truly believe this, that my work is three steps ahead of me. I have an idea for something and I tend to feel like it's leading me and I'll follow the process through, and it's not until after I've seen it that I truly understand why I'm doing this.

I'm dependent on writing for a living, so really it's to my advantage to understand how the creative process works. One of the problems is, when you start to do that, in effect you're going to have to step off the edge of science and rationality.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

I get inspired at different times and in different ways.

It's a real gift to be able to have the works of brilliant, great people to learn from and build from. It gives you so much more to draw on, and then you don't have to be all about three-chord pop songs. I don't really like that kind of writing.

I don't go in search of ideas; I try to let them find me.

A great idea is usually original to more than one discoverer. Great ideas come when the world needs them. Great ideas surround the world's ignorance and press for admission.

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

Sometimes ideas feel like they were already there, and that you're just discovering them.

One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.