A Quote by Zadie Smith
It seems to me now that the deep structures [in writing] are often subconscious and set in childhood.
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Self-knowledge is essential not only to writing, but to doing almost anything really well. It allows you to work through from a deep place - from the deep, dark corners of your subconscious mind.
I think it shapes it in very deep ways that you don't entirely understand. Rainer Maria Rilke said there are two inexhaustible sources for poetry. One is dreams, and the other is childhood. I think childhood is an inexhaustible source of your becoming who you will be and certain deep feelings are set inside of you.
Personally, I’ve gotten so that I now use a kind of two-track analysis. First, what are the factors that really govern the interests involved, rationally considered? And second, what are the subconscious influences where the brain at a subconscious level is automatically conclusions in various ways — which, by and large, are useful — but which often malfunction? One approach is rationality… And the other is to evaluate the psychological factors that cause subconscious conclusions — many of which are wrong.
My childhood memories reside somewhere in my subconscious part of my brain. Somehow I feel that my subconscious part creates far more interesting things than my conscious part can ever dream of.
There isn't a single day I don't do some writing -- if you don't, you won't have a book. When you're self-employed it is very easy to burn away your time instead -- answering e-mails, surfing the Internet, or hanging out with friends. You really must have the discipline to sit down and write every day. Most of what I am writing is living in the back of my head or in my subconscious. I find if I write every day, my subconscious will do the job for me.
The main thing a childhood in the Church did for me, I think, was set up the universe as a moral system. Once you've seen it that way, it always seems that way.
Nothing seems real anymore. Even the flames from the fire seem to beckon to me, drawing me into some great past life buried somewhere deep in my subconscious, if only I could find the key..if only..if only. Ever since my illness, my condition, I've been trying to find some logical way of passing my time, of justifying a means to an end.
The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer. And the joy of writing, when you're writing from your subconscious, is beautiful - it's thrilling. When you're editing, which is your conscious mind, it's like torture.
Every so often when I'm writing, a character might actually be a distinct person in my head - often not an actor or a face, literally a person who just seems to exist in my imagination. Then the challenge is finding somebody who is close enough to that to make me feel like I've ended up where I wanted to be.
The unsparing savagery of stories like “The Robber Bridegroom” is a sharp reminder that fairy tales belong to the childhood of culture as much as to the culture of childhood... They capture anxieties and fantasies that have deep roots in childhood experience.
One of the things meditation gives you is creativity because creativity really comes from the subconscious brain - intuition, imagination - so it's not like you can go there and say, I'm going to go be creative now. Maybe you can, but the real way you get creativity is, you know, you're taking a hot shower and great ideas come to you from the subconscious. Essentially, meditation opens a pipeline between the conscious and the subconscious.
Work is what structures adults' lives: it gives us purpose, focus, a set of responsibilities, and an identity. So when people are not participating in the labour market, all sorts of other things often start to go wrong.
I used to be the youngest person on the set [of Bored To Death]. Now I'm very often the oldest person on the set. I feel lucky about that, to be honest. Lena [Dunham], by the way is a doll to me. So much fun to work with and really open.
I have a skill set that often helps me get through hurtful moments or experiences. However, sometimes when the pain cuts really deep, my normal go-to exercises just won't work.
Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and maturity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon the next.
Whether surrounded with error or truth, the web woven around them in childhood's days lasts, and seldom wears threadbare...The traditions of my earliest recollection are so forcible upon me that it seems impossible for me to get rid of them. And so it is with others; hence the necessity of correct training in childhood.
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