Don DeLillo Quotes

Write for yourself. That's it. And write every day.

Preserving that privacy between a writer and the work is important. You have to shut out all those voices that have reacted to your work.

I don't really write for an audience. I just write what the subject seems to me to require.

When you play, do not trouble yourself as to who is listening. Yet always play as though a master listened to you.

When I sit down at the typewriter, I write. Someone once asked me if I had a fixed routine before I start, like setting up exercises, sharpening pencils, or having a drink of orange juice. I said, "No, the only thing I do before I start writing is to make sure that I'm close enough to the typewriter to reach the keys."

It's probably simply a matter of temperament that I never stopped to wonder if I could "match" what I had done, never choked off my writing by competing with myself, or with anybody else for that matter. My ambition was absolutely centered on the work itself, never on what it would bring me, or "who" it would make me. I never cared about that at all.

The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.

I think the best advice I got was to not worry about what other people would think while you were working on your first draft. Focus on getting it out of your head. You can always edit the manuscript later.

I don't read other writers because I'm writing all the time. It's too disturbing to read a writer with a good style when you're in the middle of putting your work together.

If I am to write, I must have a room to myself, which shall be my room.

It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about what's "too much" what's "enough" or if you're telling the "right" stories, just do good work.

I've always been the audience that I wanted to reach, so I write for myself.

I don't know if it's possible to affect my ego any more. There's no room left. For me, I think I make music like the way I think it should be made, like what rock should sound like. It has nothing to do with the current marketplace. And so from that state of mind, it's gonna sound different from anything else out there. And when something sounds different, I think that can be inspiring to other musicians.

I focus my energies more so on staying original.

Sure, I can talk like you, but I choose not to, It's like an art, you know? Picasso had to prove to the world he could paint the right way, before he goes putting both eyes on the side of a face... See if you paint wrong because that's the best you can do, you just a chump. But you do it because you want to? Then you're an artist...You can take that to the grave and dig it up when you need it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

When I'm sitting at my computer writing, I really have this fiendish smile on my face. I am not thinking about the past or the future or how it's going to be received. I feel that I'm very lucky that way; I don't carry that particular anxiety around with me. I'm not anxiety-free by any means, but that happens to be one that I've been spared.

You don’t ask a writer what typewriter he uses.

The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity. . .

Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing... the rest will follow.

You've got to be in a place where you can put your guard down. I've got a long list of things I consider to be selling out. But amongst that list, one of them is when you make art without putting your guard down.

You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.

It may be said that artist and censor differ in this wise: that the first is a decent mind in an indecent body and that the second is an indecent mind in a decent body.

A lot of writers ... sit in a log cabin by the lake and put their feet up by the fire in the silence and write. If you can have that that's all very well, but the true writer will learn to write anywhere -- even in prison.

What's the point of rap if you can't be yourself, huh?