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Process Quotes


"It took three years to put Shakespeare's words together, there were a lot of words to be studied and a lot of words to be sorted out, and it proved to be a major project."


"Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his conscious reflection, his progressive steps, mysterious even to himself, should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognize them in the moment of transition."


"As always, the blessed relief of starting, a feeling that was like falling into a hole filled with bright light.As always, the glum knowledge that he would not write as well as he wanted to write. As always the terror of not being able to finish, of accelerating into a brick wall. As always, the marvelous joyful nervy feeling of journey begun."


"Creativity is a synthesis of two qualities: imagination and concreteness."


"You do everything by the book, like everybody else, you get the same results s everybody else."


"Bird by bird buddy. Just take it bird by bird."


"Patience is what is needed to see through any process of production."


"Putting pen to paper without first deciding the route and pace at which to scribe is like setting off on a bicycle without first checking the tyres."


"There are three secrets to writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are."


"He did not arrive at this conclusion by the decent process of quiet, logical deduction, nor yet by the blinding flash of glorious intuition, but by the shoddy, untidy process halfway between the two by which one usually gets to know things."


"The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written."


"The practice of forgiving is a sequential practice that begins with excusing someone."
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