Philipp Meyer Quotes

I cannot always write at the same time, in the same place. I work, travel and have a vigorous family life. If I'm stranded in an airport lobby - I write. If I have to wait in a doctor's office - I write. If I have a morning or evening to myself - I write.

But I can also write in crappy motel rooms, while standing in line, or sitting in the dentist's chair.

Some writers say they cannot write in front of a window; many say they cannot function without almost perfect quiet. A writer with only two hours a day can write in the back of an open truck on the Interstate.

I have nothing like a writing routine. I sometimes have trouble buckling down to write at home.

Anything that keeps you happy and writing is part of my writing ritual: I like music, so I tend to have it playing in the background. But if I'm interested, I can write in an airport waiting areas.

I do a lot of writing on planes, actually. It's my time that I can just relax and have absolutely no distractions.

I write anywhere - when I have an idea, it's hard not to write. I used to be kind of precious about where I wrote. Everything had to be quiet and I couldn't be disturbed; it really filled my day.

I think it's always an adjustment for me, but I do feel like, ultimately, I can kind of write anywhere. It just takes a second to get back in to the groove.

I work on my novels wherever I have a PC, and I have four or five places around the world where I do have a PC. These days you can just slip a little flash drive into your top pocket, fly for 12 hours, come to another place, plug it into a computer and you are away again.

I'm usually working on several things at once. If I get bored with one, I can go on to another. That way, I never get stuck.

Sometimes I am glad I am not a philosopher - how would I ever complete a single chain of thought when someone is constantly asking me to do something? I don't think Plato would have been able to write his dialogues if he had a wife who kept bugging him to pass the pita bread.

Writing is a sufficiently lonely and mysterious pastime that I don't begrudge myself a talisman or two, so long as they don't become ways of distracting myself from the glum inescapability of actual work.

Even when I'm travelling - which is when I do most of my writing - I have a little portable keyboard.

Most of my recent plays were written in the railway train between Hatfield and Kings Cross. I write anywhere, on the top of omnibuses or wherever I may be; it is all the same to me.

Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.

Don't equate activity with efficiency. You are paying your key people to see the big picture. Don't let them get bogged down in a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling. Announce a Friday afternoon off once in a while. Cancel a Monday morning meeting or two. Tell the cast of characters you'd like them to spend the amount of time normally spent preparing for attending the meeting at their desks, simply thinking about an original idea.

It's annoying when you've got a guitar and you're working on music and then you have to go and do the shopping or someone calls your mobile and you get distracted or you have to go out and do something. So it's nice to just concentrate on it one hundred percent and give your all to it.

A jet plane cannot mow the lawn, but it can fly to distant destinations. Don't worry so much about what you can't do; just do what you can as only you can do it.

If one is the kind of creature I am and wants to do the kind of writing I want to do, an undisturbed bourgeois existence with no distractions seems in order. A single meeting outside the family upsets one's whole inner web, makes one start off on two-days' thinking and weighing, destroys a delicate balance etc. etc. ... I now have enough friends to last me a lifetime and that is enough. I am going to close the doors and hibernate at least for a couple of years. I am frightfully depressed about my work. It seems to me perfectly mediocre.

When the writing is going well, I'm obsessive. I don't shower, I don't take phone calls, I hardly respond to text messages, I don't do email. I take breaks only to read, and usually I read poetry. When it's not going well, I just lie in bed and eat chocolate.

WHEN YOU LEAVE YOUR TYPEWRITER YOU LEAVE YOUR MACHINE GUN AND THE RATS COME POURING THROUGH.

A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.

He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important.

When you allow yourself to begin to dream big dreams, creatively abandon the activities that are taking up too much of your time, and focus your inward energies on alleviating your main constraints, you start to feel an incredible sense of power and confidence.

No music. No rituals. At home I write in my office or on the laptop in the kitchen where our puppy likes to sleep, and I love his company. But I've trained myself to be able to work anywhere, and I write on trains, planes, in automobiles (if I'm not the driver), airports, hotel rooms. I travel often. If I couldn't write wherever I was I would get little done. I also can write in short bursts. Fifteen minutes are enough to move a story forward.