Patrick O'Brian Quotes

The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.

I don't type [when I write] because . . . I often have the feeling that everything flows directly from my right hand.

Part of my function as a writer is to dream awake. And that usually happens. If I sit down to write in the morning, in the beginning of that writing session and the ending of that session, I'm aware that I'm writing. I'm aware of my surroundings. It's like shallow sleep on both ends, when you go to bed and when you wake up. But in the middle, the world is gone and I'm able to see better.

It's always struck me as unfair that writing has so little sensation when it's going well.

Sometimes I write with music on, and if I'm in a good flow, I don't even hear it.

When you're writing there's a deep, deep level of concentration way below your normal self. This strange voice, these strange sentences come out of you.

When I'm writing, I'm just in it and trying to figure out what seems best.

Sometimes in writing you have difficult periods and then other times it just flows.

When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat.

I think people who create and write, it actually does flow-just flows from into their head, into their hand, and they write it down. It's simple.

The material came bubbling up inside like a geyser or an oil gusher. It streamed up of its own accord, down my arm and out of my fountain pen in a torrent of six thousand words a day.

I can kind of picture what I want to do and my body just does it. You feel your way through a trick. I close my eyes sometimes.

When I wrote my first novel - I was nineteen - I did it very quickly. If you write fast, you feel like you're entering something not yet familiar - a world rather than thoughts about the world.

It takes me, like, half an hour to write the lyrics for a song. They just come out.

I try to not be self-conscious in my writing process. I think it's important to just be in your subconscious mind - at least when you're starting an idea.

I think the thing that I think about the most when I consider my father's philosophies is attaining that third stage of performance where you no longer have to think about what you're doing; you've worked long and hard enough to be able to have your body respond when you want it without your mind getting in the way.

I used to do three or four songs a day, just write them - boom, boom, boom, and done - because of how spontaneous I was.

I don't outline. I sit down to write, and I take the ride. If something starts to not feel right, I go back to the last place that felt like jazz to me.

Hitch your unconscious mind to your writing arm.

Writing is like being in a dream state or under self-directed hypnosis. It induces a state of recall that - while not perfect - is pretty spooky.

Now, as I've gotten older I've been able to write more quickly. Sometimes I get in the space of something and I can do a lot in a day.

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.

When I'm writing, I thoroughly enjoy it. It just goes on.

The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. One must get out of life...one must become externalised; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one's character, living in the brain.

The mental state I'm in is completely different, but the act of trying to write is the same. I mean, in all instances you try to write good sentences. But in a novel you're free to do whatever you want, and in the autobiographical works you can't make things up.