Cormac McCarthy Quotes

I think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration. A book, especially a longer book, it's a different kind of force that pushes you through it. It's a vision of the whole thing.

Stories have a richness that goes way beyond fact. My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is listen to her book. It might take you where you don't expect to go.

A book of mine is always a matter of fate. There is something unpredictable about the process of writing, and I cannot prescribe for myself any predetermined course.

For each book, there's a back story of where the idea came from. Sometimes it's derived from a current event or topic of discussion. Often it begins with a character. And often, I have NO idea what sparked the idea. It's just there.

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.

Anything that propels me to create, like [my book, Straight Walk]. It kept me inspired for almost four years.

Thus far, everything I've made has come out of my really feeling it, out of the fire of my life.

I wanted to create comics as soon as a I learned humans were behind them, that they were not natural phenomena like trees and boulders.

The books I write because I want to read them, the games because I want to play them, and stories I tell because I find them exciting personally.

I think all poems are commissioned. They just come to me without somebody outside commissioning them. The idea comes and I will live with them 'til I get it as close to what I mean. I've never been totally satisfied. I've come close a few times.

All authentic art is conceived at a sacred moment and nourished in a blessed hour; an inner impulse creates it, often without the artist being aware of it.

By nature, a storyteller is a plagiarist. Everything one comes across - each incident, book, novel, life episode, story, person, news clip - is a coffee bean that will be crushed, ground up, mixed with a touch of cardamom, sometimes a tiny pinch of salt, boiled thrice with sugar, and served as a piping-hot tale.

Delay is natural to a writer. He is like a surfer-he bides his time, waits for the perfect wave on which to ride in. Delay is instinctive with him. He waits for the surge (of emotion? of strength? of courage?) that will carry him along.

I made the flames lick the surface of the painting in such a way that is recorded the spontaneous traces of the fire. But what is it that provokes in me this pursuit of the impression of fire? Why must I search for its traces?

If it's something that I feel uncomfortable with, that's a reason for me to write it. I kind of like to make myself feel uncomfortable. I think if you're starting to feel uncomfortable with something when you're writing it, that's the reason really to push on with it.

Books" - Snell smiled - "are a kind of magic.

Dear, I can't write, it's all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession.

Maybe it's because it's connected to my childhood, or it's connected to the origins of what drove me creatively, but I feel like my life never makes more sense than when I'm in that process.

The history of books shows the humblest origin of some of the most valued, wrought as these were out of obscure materials by persons whose names thereafter became illustrious. The thumbed volumes, now so precious to thousands, were compiled from personal experiences and owe their interest to touches of inspiration of which the writer was less author than amanuensis, himself the voiced word of life for all times.

When I'm writing a book, generally I start with the mood and setting, along with a couple of specific images—things that have come into my head, totally abstracted from any narrative, that I've fixated on. After that, I construct a world, or an area, into which that general setting, that atmosphere, and the specific images I've focused on can fit.

It's funny - for a long time, I didn't know I was writing a book. I was writing stories. For me, each story took so long and took so much out of me, that when I finished it, I was like, Oh my gosh, I feel like I've poured everything from myself into this, and then I'd get depressed for a week. And then once I was ready to write a new story, I would want to write about something that was completely different, so I would search for a totally different character with a different set of circumstances.

Usually when I'm writing, I kind of know what it is before I start writing and I write stream of consciousness style.

If you are any kind of an artist, then validation . . . can be a result, but you're going to do the work anyway.

I certainly don't sit down and plan a book out before I write it. There's a phrase I use called "The Valley Full of Clouds." Writing a novel is as if you are going off on a journey across a valley. The valley is full of mist, but you can see the top of a tree here and the top of another tree over there. And with any luck you can see the other side of the valley. But you cannot see down into the mist. Nevertheless, you head for the first tree.

You're all alone when you're a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that. But it's much more interesting to talk about books. After all, that's what life used to be for writers: they talk books, politics, history, America. Nothing has replaced that.