A Quote by John Lanchester

The truth is, it is hard to know where ideas come from.

John Lanchester

Quote Topics

Come Hard Ideas Know Truth Truth Is

Quote Author

John Lanchester
British - Novelist
Born: February 25, 1962

One of the most common questions writers are asked is "Where do you get your ideas?" But the sad truth is, we don't know. Ideas can come at any time and from any direction: in the shower, waiting for an elevator, or while bouncing across Wikipedia pages.

Scott Westerfeld

When people ask me where I get my ideas, I lie. I tell them I draw inspiration from the news, the world, my dreams. Or I joke and say that I steal from other writers. I lie because I don't know where ideas come from, and I'm afraid if I look too hard, they'll stop coming.

Marcus Sakey

Some of the ideas that come from the fringe of the far right are just so implausible that it is hard to take those ideas seriously.

John Conyers

Ideas are floating like fish. Desire for an idea is like a bait on a hook. If you desire an idea, it pulls and it makes a kind of a bait. Ideas will come swimming up. And you don't know them until they enter the conscious mind. And then bingo! There it is! You know it instantly. And then more come in. If you go fishing for ideas, a lot of ideas will just pop in. And one of them will make you fall in love.

David Lynch

Now some people when they sit down to write and nothing special comes, no good ideas, are so frightened that they drink a lot of strong coffee to hurry them up, or smoke packages of cigarettes, or take drugs or get drunk. They do not know that ideas come slowly, and that the more clear, tranquil and unstimulated you are, the slower the ideas come, but the better they are.

Brenda Ueland

It is hard to come up with ideas that are achievable on a scale that you know you are going to have for an indie film but it also have some kind of hook.

Jake Schreier

Everyone wants a definition of creativity that makes what they do into something special and what everyone else does into nothing special. But the fact is, we're all creative. We come up with weird and interesting ideas all the time. The biggest difference between 'creators' isn't their imagination - it's how hard they work. Ideas are easy. Doing stuff is hard.

Cory Doctorow

Truth has power. And if we all gravitate toward similar ideas, maybe we do so because those ideas are true...written deep within us. And when we hear the truth, even if we don't understand it, we feel that truth resonate within us...vibrating with our unconscious wisdom. Perhaps the truth is not learned by us, but rather, the truth is re-called...re-membered...-re-cognized...as that which is already inside us.

Dan Brown

I see the emphasis on a lot of ideas and I know that's directed at me. [Megan Chance] come up with an idea, hone it, and write it. I come up with thirty ideas, flesh each one out, research each one, come up with characters, and then decide I don't like it.

Megan Chance

It's not hard to get the ideas when they come. They just come... it's painful waiting for them.

Oscar Wilde

We do not know whether there are extra dimensions or multiverse. Let's go forward with the possible ideas that come out of the mathematics. It's hard for us to imagine a universe that would have no time at all.

Brian Greene

True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that therefore is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as.

William James

I don't know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if I'm not there, they go away again.

Philip Pullman

I don't know exactly where ideas come from, but when I'm working well ideas just appear. I've heard other people say similar things - so it's one of the ways I know there's help and guidance out there. It's just a matter of our figuring out how to receive the ideas or information that are waiting to be heard.

Jim Henson

To me business is a sport. I love knowing that 24x7x365xforever I'm competing with people I don't know. To build my businesses. To come up with new ideas. To come up with better ideas. That motivates me.