Daniel Tammet Quotes

You can't sit around and wait for somebody to say who you are. You need to write it and paint it and do it

Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don't know what it is yet.

My writing was liberated once I abandoned acting.

Writing is a really good first step toward that goal of knowing yourself.

As far as writing, it's grown because I've really grown comfortable with who I am.

The world can't tell you who you are. You've just got to figure out who you are and be there, for better or worse.

I feel empowered to be a different kind of writer. The longer I stay here, the more light filters into my work. I feel very American. I belong.

I've spent most of my life writing and developing everything that I've wanted to be in - which is why I started writing in the first place.

As I grew in confidence, I was able to come out and say that I'm a musician.

I've said very openly that the first aspect of my artistry to arrive was writing. It took me a good number of years to find my voice.

'Shortcomings' was me figuring out who I am.

In Colombia is where I discovered myself as a writer.

The most creative act you will ever undertake is the act of creating yourself.

How did I change my life? I wanted things. I wanted women and I wanted to write books.

You create identity, you're not given identity per se. What became more and more interesting to me wasn't the I, it was text because it's text that create identity. That's how I got interested in plagiarism.

A life of writing books is a trying adventure in which you cannot find out where you are unless you lose your way.

Every child is simple, just a clean slate. Then the parents start writing on his slate - what he has to become. Then the teachers, the priests, the leaders - they all go on emphasizing that you have to become somebody; otherwise, you have wasted your life. Just the opposite is the case. You are a being. You need not become anybody else. That is the meaning of simplicity: remaining at ease with one's being, and not going on any track of becoming - which is unending.

Here's the thing: The book that will most change your life is the book you write.

I never thought I'd be a person who would want to write books...I promise you not a single English teacher I've ever had would have thought that this would be going on right now.

If you were a fully realized person-whatever the hell that would be-you wouldn't fool around writing books.

Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing.

I have never written a book that didn't teach me far more than it taught my reader.

I never thought I could write this much and now that it's coming to an end, I feel sad that I have to stop, sort of the way you feel at the end of a really good book and you know you're going to miss the main character. But in this case, the main character is me! Myself. Joe (formerly JoDan) Bunch. —Joe Bunch

I'm happy to be a woman but much of it was learned over the course of life. Really thudded into me. You learn it. It's a kind of mastery and artistry. The deeper person underneath the scent of Diptyque Philosykos or whatever is much less gendered. Every person has a range. In fiction, you get to be it all. I'm as much the men in my book as I am the women. I write how I write and there is no mission to stake a claim.

I don't want to recover from writing this book [The Onion]. I feel very poised. I feel like I'm with my mother for the first time ever. I feel like I've confronted her, and the confrontation goes on.