I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.
Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.
Mostly you write to find out what you have to say.
If I sit and daydream, the images rush by like a succession of colored slides.
To keep a diary is to attempt a difficult literary form. Its effectiveness is likely to derive from a special blend of honesty and appetite for life that gives the power to record everyday happenings while magically freeing them from banality and triviality.
I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.
I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose-to find out what I think, to know where I stand.
Writing has got to be an act of discovery....I write to find out what I'm thinking about.
Imagination is merely the exploitation of our memory.
Imagination is the primary gift of human consciousness.
When you're writing, I think a big part of writing comes out of an attempt to understand yourself. You're dealing with emotions and thoughts that are native to you. So that probably winds up in your characters.
I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them.
Follow the wandering, the distraction, find out why the mind has wandered; pursue it, go into it fully. When the distraction is completely understood, then that particular distraction is gone. When another comes, pursue it also.
I can imagine anything except having no imagination.
The pen is an instrument of discovery rather than just a recording implement. If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you're simply using a pen to record what you have thought out.
To me, thoughts are fun and art is fun. The strength of our society should not be idle entertainments but the joy of pursuing ideas.
I carry around a little journal with me, a little notebook and a pen and just write all the time. Not necessarily actually sitting down and writing lyrics, just free-form writing, whatever's going on in my mind.
People who keep journals have life twice
I write - though perhaps it sounds pretentious to say so - to make a clearing in the wilderness, to find out what I care about and what exactly to make of it.
Much of what we see in the universe ... starts out as imaginary. Often you must imagine something before you can come to terms with it.
Thinking should be like musical meditation. Has any philosopher pursued a thought to its limits the way Bach or Beethoven develop and exhaust a musical theme? Even after having read the most profound thinkers, one still feels the need to begin anew. Only music gives definitive answers.
I write to find out what I think.
With writing, I can express myself, really, and share my ideas and just let my thoughts flow out.
You can think about red. You can think about pink. You can think up a horse. Oh, the THINKS you can think!
I've always believed that you write to discover what you think. On most subjects, if I'm asked what do I think about them, I'd say I don't know, I'll have to write them down.
