Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony.
Douglas CouplandRead
Books arrive in my head all at once, and then it becomes an 18-month process of getting it all down on paper.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The creative process involves a surge of ideas followed by extensive effort to bring them to fruition.
This quote by Douglas Coupland reflects the nature of creativity, highlighting how inspiration often strikes in a flood and then requires considerable time and effort to translate those ideas into written words. It underscores the difference between the initial rush of inspiration and the laborious task of crafting those ideas into a finished product.
Themes
CreativityBooksWritingProcessInspiration
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop, to encourage participants: 'Remember, as Coupland said, it often takes time to get everything down on paper.'
More from Douglas Coupland
All quotes →...we're told by TV and Reader's Digest that a crisis will trigger massive personal change--and that those big changes will make the pain worthwhile. But from what he could see, big change almost never happens. People simply feel lost. They have no idea what to say or do or feel or think. they become messes and tend to remain messes.
Douglas CouplandRead
When the world throws you too much information, the only way you can stay sane or survive is to look for pattern recognition. Amidst all the blurs, is there a constellation that emerges, is there a straight line that's emerging?
Douglas CouplandRead
I'm not patient - and I'm getting more impatient as I get older - but I am disciplined about writing, and I want that on my tombstone: 'He wasn't patient, but he was disciplined.'
Douglas CouplandRead
If you waste five minutes of time a day, over the course of a year that adds up to one full work day. Think of five wasted minutes as a slow-release holiday drug. Savour it.
Douglas CouplandRead
When someone tells you they’ve just bought a house, they might as well tell you they no longer have a personality. You can immediately assume so many things: that they’re locked into jobs they hate; that they’re broke; that they spend every night watching videos; that they’re fifteen pounds overweight; that they no longer listen to new ideas. It’s profoundly depressing.
Douglas CouplandRead
Similar quotes
The painter... does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents.
Annie DillardRead
I've learned a lot of things about myself through singing. I used to have a certain dislike of the audience, not as individual people, but as a giant body who was judging me. Of course, it wasn`t really them judging me. It was me judging me. Once I got past that fear, it freed me up, not just when I was performing but in other parts of my life.
Julie AndrewsRead
The next time you look into the mirror, just look at the way the ears rest next to the head; look at the way the hairline grows; think of all the little bones in your wrist. It is a miracle. And the dance is a celebration of that miracle.
Martha GrahamRead
But I think we are seeing a resurgence of the graphic ghost story like The Others, Devil's Backbone and The Sixth Sense. It is a return to more gothic atmospheric ghost storytelling.
Guillermo Del ToroRead
Sometimes you have to go places with characters and emotions within yourself you don't want to do, but you have a duty to the story and as a storyteller to do it.
Hugh JackmanRead
No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.
Claude MonetRead