A Quote by Chang-Rae Lee

I think that's great - I just try not to be one of those people. I find the more I think about it, the less free I feel when I write and when I work. — © Chang-Rae Lee
I think that's great - I just try not to be one of those people. I find the more I think about it, the less free I feel when I write and when I work.
I try never to focus on the radio, just find great songs, find emotion and just write the best songs you can. I think when you get fixated on trying to do something too accurate, it becomes more washed out and less what you intended it to be. So I think each time the challenge for me is to try and reinvent a little bit.
Work begets work. Just work. If you work, people will find out about you and want to work with you if you're good. So work anywhere you can. That's why I've changed my mind about these theatres where people work for free or have to pay money. I think it's kind of terrible that they feel they have to, but you know what? They're working.
I think, initially, working on your own is really great because it allows you to just be really free and not worry about how things are perceived or if people are going to think you're an idiot. And once that becomes ingrained, at least for me, I think I'll feel really comfortable to work with other people and still feel that same freedom.
I think going away and disappearing for a couple of years - or a few years, or whatever - definitely changed the way I look at songwriting. It made me feel more free, it made me feel more like I could just write what I wanted to write about. I wanted to write more observational songs.
Because I write realistic fiction, I generally don't think about fixing anyone - I just think about how I want to feel at the end of the book - And I try to write toward that feeling.
I think that's an important lesson for young people who want to be artists: You have to find someone who believes in you and who will help you find that time where you don't have to think about a job but just making work. If I didn't have those people in my life, I wouldn't be in the position I'm in.
I don't think my writing has much to do with my age. For me, my biography is more about what I was reading at what age. It's more of an intellectual thing of wanting to be free to write and think without being too bound by categorisation. I don't think I'm made for these times; I feel more like an old-fashioned writer.
I need to find avenues to express all of my creativity. There's always polarizing forces. Sometimes I feel like my work is going in different directions, but hopefully it's just expanding. And I think as much as possible to just let ourselves be in all the various aspects. I feel more inspired by people who just will let themselves be as creators, and I don't think it has to be contradictory.
As I get older I find myself thinking about stories more and more before I work so that by the time I eventually sit down to write them, I know more or less how it's going to look, start or feel. Once I do actually set pencil to paper, though, everything changes and I end up erasing, redrawing and rewriting more than I keep. Once a picture is on the page I think of about ten things that never would have occurred to me otherwise. Then when I think of the strip at other odd times during the day, it's a completely different thing than it was before I started.
I always think that the exceptional people are those who remain outsiders but still communicate on a grand scale. I think I want everyone to feel more free, and so I feel really claustrophobic on behalf of lots of people.
The more I find life to be a great design, the more I suspect it to be singular in existence; the more I suspect it to be singular, the more I feel it to be specific and personal; the more I feel it to be personal, the more I think of it to be a mere question; And the more I think of it to be a question, the less I understand the questioner.
I do try to do high-impact work, and I try to think of ideas people haven't thought about that have broad implications, but I don't restrict myself to that. I try to work on things that I find interesting.
Since becoming a mother, I'd say it's more so affected my general outlook on things. I'm less worried about everything. Less scared to make those numbers that people think are standard or less scared to create something that maybe I don't think people are going to like, because it's all about if I like it. I need to be happy.
I think that anyone really can write songs, it just takes having an idea and a feeling and chasing it, and you can learn more about it. I think that's why I go to so many sessions. It is a craft that you can learn from other people. I find it to be the most fascinating thing. So I write a lot, yeah!
I don't really wanna think about themes. I wanna just think about the experience of the movie. I feel like, as soon as I reduce it to a theme, once I write that sentence, it won't be that great. I feel like there's more potential for it to mean something interesting if I'm not forcing it to mean something I've already decided.
I don't write because I think I have anything particularly interesting to say. I write because I love writing more than any other work I've done. I do think about entertaining the reader to the extent that I try always to write a book that I myself would want to read, but I don't think it's up for me to decide if what I've written is interesting to others. That is entirely up to others.
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