A Quote by David Hewson

There is an argument for believing that the entire process of writing a piece of fiction is simply a thinly-controlled and highly-internalised nervous breakdown designed, with a bit of luck, to produce something worthwhile at the end.

David Hewson

Quote Topics

Argument Believing Bit Breakdown Controlled Designed End Entire Fiction Highly Luck Nervous Nervous Breakdown Piece Process Produce Simply Something Worthwhile Writing

Quote Author

David Hewson
British - Author
Born: January 9, 1953

I think that it's worthwhile to explore the ways in which you write the person that's writing your plays as opposed to simply assuming that it's all a natural process and there's no design in it. Because your public persona is designed, to a certain extent, and you can have fun and profit at various times doing that.

Tony Kushner

The process of writing fiction is totally unconscious. It comes from what you are learning, as you live, from within. For me, all writing is a process of discovery. We are looking for the meaning of life. No matter where you are, there are conflicts and dramas everywhere. It is the process of what it means to be a human being; how you react and are reacted upon, these inward and outer pressures. If you are writing with a direct cause in mind, you are writing propaganda. It's fatal for a fiction writer.

Nadine Gordimer

A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings.

Earl Wilson

When you're a first time director, you're often considered what's called a "deadly attachment" in the eyes of financiers, because they're trusting you with a lot of money to bring something home, to get great performances, to not have a nervous breakdown in the process.

John Krokidas

Even though I always claimed that I didn't want to write about something - once I wasn't writing fiction, anyway; I think for me the change from fiction to poetry was that in fiction I was writing about something, in poetry I was writing something.

Vito Acconci

Writing books isn't a drastic departure from writing for the stage. I've always written in the long format, five, eight, 10-minute pieces rather than one-liners, so since writing books, the process hasn't changed much. A piece in my live routine can end up as part of one of my HBO specials, and it can also end up in one of the books.

George Carlin

Burroughs called his greatest novel 'Naked Lunch,' by which he meant it's what you see on the end of a fork. Telling the truth. It's very difficult to do that in fiction because the whole process of writing fiction is a process of sidestepping the truth. I think he got very close to it, in his way, and I hope I've done the same in mine.

J. G. Ballard

There are so many rules about play writing. I'd have a nervous breakdown if I followed them.

Terrence McNally

I don't think I have ever created an entire fiction piece or followed a historical piece and made that into a sermon.

Max Lucado

When Henry Ford decided to produce his famous V-8 motor, he chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. The design was placed on paper, but the engineers agreed, to a man, that it was simply impossible to cast an eight-cylinder engine-block in one piece. Ford replied,''Produce it anyway.

Henry Ford

If you're writing a piece for the Boston Pops, the balance is towards one end. If you're writing a piece for a chamber music society, then it's towards another point. I won't make a final answer on that. I think it changes with every piece.

Peter Maxwell Davies

A piece of writing is only worth doing if you're a different person at the end of the process than you were at the beginning.

Brian Morton

From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing.

Joe Eszterhas

There is something unwholesome and destructive about the entire writing process.

Joy Williams

We all like to believe we are completely self-sufficient, but at the end of it all, we're all searching for a human connection, something to make it all feel a bit more worthwhile.