A Quote by Catherine Drinker Bowen

What the writer needs is an empty day ahead.

Catherine Drinker Bowen

Quote Topics

Day Empty Needs Writer

Quote Author

Catherine Drinker Bowen
American - Writer
January 1, 1897 - November 1, 1973

A writer needs loneliness, and he gets his share of it. He needs love, and he gets shared and also unshared love. He needs friendship. In fact, he needs the universe. To be a writer is, in a sense, to be a day-dreamer - to be living a kind of double life.

Jorge Luis Borges

Focus on what needs to be done that day. Don't think too far ahead. Once you start thinking too far ahead, you get distracted by things that don't matter on that day.

Khris Middleton

From Rebecca Miller, I took the idea that the director needs to arrive every day an hour ahead of everyone else and walk through the entire day.

Greta Gerwig

Makeup is only fun if it's occasional and capricious - just like it's a treat to have an empty day ahead, but it wouldn't be if you were doing 20 years in Parkhurst.

Victoria Coren Mitchell

I'm an immigrant writer, or an African writer, or an Ethiopian-American writer, and occasionally an American writer according to the whims and needs of my interpreters.

Dinaw Mengestu

Being pregnant taught me how to be a better writer. It was a lesson in negative capability and surrendering to necessity. Suddenly, my body instinctually yielded to the needs of this growing being, and I had no choice but to embrace what was happening and all that lay ahead, even if I was afraid and uncertain. So, while being a parent has made writing more challenging, it has also made being a writer more certain. There's no room to procrastinate; there is to time for fear.

Robin Beth Schaer

A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.

Orson Welles

The world is only tolerable because of the empty places in it...when the world's filled up, we'll have to get hold of a star. Any star. Venus, or Mars. Get hold of it and leave it empty. Man needs an empty space somewhere for his spirit to rest in.

Doris Lessing

I'm not a writer just to be a writer. I want to say something that really needs expressing.

Allison Pearson

Love makes you empty - empty of jealousy, empty of power trips, empty of anger, empty of competitiveness, empty of your ego and all its garbage. But love also makes you full of things which are unknown to you right now; it makes you full of fragrance, full of light, full of joy.

Rajneesh

The first thing a writer needs to know is what kind of writer he/she is.

Andre Aciman

A writer has to be driven crazy to help him to see. A writer needs his poisons.

Philip Roth

A writer with her work needs to be like a dog with a bone all the time. She needs to know where she's hidden it. Where she's stored the good stuff. She needs to keep gnawing at it, even after all the meat seems to be gone. When a student of mine says (okay, whines) that she's impatient, or tired, or the worst: isn't it good enough? this may be harsh, but she loses just a little bit of my respect. Because there is no room for impatience, or exhaustion, or self-satisfaction, or laziness. All of these really mean, simply, that the inner censor has won the day.

Dani Shapiro

I'm one of the narrative-push people. I don't outline, I don't plan ahead. So I'm my first reader, telling myself the story as I'm going along. Since I haven't designed it ahead of time, each day I have to be sure that the footing is solid before I make the next step. I think you could be more intricate if you work it out ahead of time.

Donald E. Westlake

I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next day had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue.