Process Quotes

Happiness is not at the top of the mountain, but in how to climb.

Knowledge , surely, is always of time , whereas knowing is not of time. Knowledge is from a source, from accumulation, from conclusion, while knowing is a movement.

Much of songwriting is simply a mystery.

I really need to know where I'm going with fiction to write it in a way that at least I'm happy with. And I really think that a lot of fiction books end badly because terrific writers said, "I'll just figure it out" and plunge in, but have created so many problems that they are kind of impossible to solve. I mean, I'm talking really good writers do this and you can tell when they got to the end they either had to do something preposterous or they just don't really resolve things. So for fiction I spend a lot more time outlining and for humor I really don't do much of it.

Drawing is a kind of hypnotism: one looks in such a way at the model, that he comes and takes a seat on the paper.

I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.

What's done is done. The joy is in the doing.

I do not seek. I find.

The Great Vessel takes long to complete.

It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.

For most people, spiritual awakening is a gradual process. Rarely does it happen all at once. When it does, though, it is usually brought about by intense suffering.

A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being.

Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.

I cook every chance in my pot. And only when it is cooked through do I welcome it as my food.

I don't have a method. All I do is read a lot, think a lot, and rewrite constantly. It's not a scientific thing.

Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He’s convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.

Each movement is only learned after you've perfected the one before it.

Writing ... it begins as an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant.

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity.

Everything stinks until it's finished.

Get your passion on the paper. Detach from the outcome. Forget about whether it's going to get published.

The world's big things only can be done by paying attention to their humble beginnings.

Almost every evening, either I went to [Georges] Braque's studio or Braque came to mine. Each of us had to see what the other had done during the day. We criticized each other's work. A canvas wasn't finished unless both of us felt it was.

Those that respect the law and love sausage should watch neither being made.

The first draft of anything is sh*t.

If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.

As soon as your mind knows that it's on and it's supposed to produce some lines, either it doesn't or it produces things that are very predictable. And that's why I say I'm not interested in writing something that I thought about. I'm interested in discovering where my mind wants to go, or what object it wants to pick up.

I do a first draft as passionately and as quickly as I can. I believe a story is valid only when it's immediate and passionate, when it dances out of your subconscious. If you interfere in any way, you destroy it.

Hope is not strategy. Hope fits with vision, but we must have a strategy and a process to make our vision become a reality.

You don't pay any attention to anything anyone else says, no opinions. The important thing is to explode with a story, to emotionalize a story, not to think it. You start thinking - the story's going to die on its feet.

I just said, you know, this is a great track but this lyric, I don't believe it. It sounds like I'm trying to say something, instead of it naturally coming out of me, like I was saying something that I already knew. Anyway, I can't remember what it was. And either I threw it all out or I threw 90 percent of it out, and kept a line or two. That's happened a couple of times to me. Not too often, but a couple of times. Very aggravating when it does happen.

People try to force things. It's disastrous. Just leave your mind alone. Your intuition knows what it wants to write, so get out of the way.

I try to write every day until the book is done, but the exact process depends on the story and its structure. Sometimes, if the story is more linear, I write it from beginning to end.

I don't do research. I never have.

Hypotheses are only the pieces of scaffolding which are erected round a building during the course of construction, and which are taken away as soon as the edifice is completed.

Some stories or passages are more difficult and demand more fussing with than others, but, in general, I'm a two-draft writer rather than a six-draft writer, or whatever.

When I sit down to write, which is the essential moment in my life, I am completely alone. Whenever I write a book, I accumulate a lot of documentation. That background material is the most intimate part of my private life. It's a little embarrassing - like being seen in your underwear It's like the way magicians never tell others how they make a dove come out of a hat.

roads were made for journeys not destinations

Usually, I start thinking about my next novel soon after completing the latest, and it can take anywhere from a month to 6 months to come up with a story.

Then, rising with Aurora's light, The Muse invoked, sit down to write; Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline.

Every sentence is the result of a long probation.

I don't believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.

Now I know that patience and time can do more than even strength and passion. The years of frustration are ready to be harvested. All that I have managed to accomplish, and all that I hope to accomplish, has been and will be by that plodding, patient, persevering process which builds the ant heap, particle by particle, thought by thought, step by step.

What I know for sure is that it's only when you make the process your goal that the big dream can follow. That doesn't necessarily mean your process will necessarily lead you to wealth or fame. In fact, your dream may have nothing to do with tangible prosperity and everything to do with creating a life filled with joy, one with no regrets and a clear conscience. I've learned that wealth is a tool that gives you choices, but it can't compensate for a life not fully lived and it certainly can't create a sense of peace within you.

There is a fine line I have to walk throughout the writing process in a novel. It is this line between drama and melodrama, and it is this line between evoking genuine emotional power and being manipulative.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

I don't work from nature, I work like nature.

Write 1000 words a day. That's only about four pages, but force yourself to do it. Put your finger down your throat and throw up. That's what writing's all about.

The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.

You'd type like hell. I spent $9.80 and in nine days I had Fahrenheit 451.

You need to have a collaborative hiring process.

Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.

But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, forsooth, they terminate in the same two points.

La dernie' re chose qu'on trouve en faisant un ouvrage, est de savoir celle qu'il faut mettre la premie' re. The last thing one discovers in composing a work iswhat to put first.

It would be very curious to record by means of photographs, not the stage of the picture, but its metamorphoses. Perhaps one would perceive the path taken by the mind in order to put its dreams into a concrete form. But what is really very curious is to observe that fundamentally the picture does not change, that despite appearances the initial vision remains almost intact.

I consider a work of art as a product of calculations, calculations that are frequently unknown to the author himself.

In art, practice always comes before theory.

I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, hoever, turns out to be not a state but a process.

Whatever Nature undertakes, she can only accomplish it in a sequence. She never makes a leap.

Really good original ideas are very hard to come up with. Good ideas - easy. Really good, original ideas - it can take months.