Voice comes to you through a spell, a trance. The best voices are not you... they're a little away from you.

My best stories come out of nowhere, with no concern for form at all.

Voice comes to you through a spell, a trance. The best voices are not you... they're a little away from you.

A man's got to do what a man's got to do. A woman must do what he can't.

A writer's job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.

Honestly, I envy painters, who can have a masterpiece in one morning. Or musicians, who can write something in 30 minutes and arrange it in an hour, sometimes. 'Cause with this, with writing, you can occasionally feel like a caveman, like you've been working with pitch and tar on this brush.

I distrust thought. The interior life is highly overrated. I don't like the wispy and the vague... or inductive logic in any kind of writing. I'm impatient with writers who make too much sense. The better things that I've done have come to me by instinct.

I don't go around thinking about regret; regret doesn't consume me as a person... I'm not certain about whether any writer, any artist, any musician, can write without regret, so I don't think perhaps it's even particularly Southern.

I don't write under the ghost of Faulkner. I live in the same town and find his life and work inspiring, but that's it. I have a motorcycle and tool along the country lanes. I travel at my own speed.

I found out about reviews early on. They're mostly written by sad men on bad afternoons. That's probably why I'm less angry than some writers, who are so narcissistic they consider every line of every review, even a thoughtful one, as major treason.

I grew up when people seemed actually to be hurting themselves for their art. Of course, some of it was phony.

I had absolute freedom to create things on my own and in silence. No rush, the artificial rush by media. Certainly no rush to grow up. We had plenty of boyhood, plenty of girlhood.

I hate editing. I love to write, but I hate to reread my stuff. To revise.

I lost my second marriage because of drinking, and I loved the woman very much. But I thought I needed booze to write. I'm glad I was disabused.

I wanted very much to be Miles Davis when I was a boy, but without the practice. It just looked like an endless road.

I was always kind of florid. And full of rhetoric. That was my flaw. My whole time writing, I've had to work against that because it can be a wrecking posture.

I was born in Clinton, Mississippi, which had 1,500-2,500 people when I was growing up - a village.

I wouldn't be happy had I only been a teacher, if all I had done was help young people, frankly. I don't get nearly the joy teaching as I do out of creation.

I'll tell you why I like writing: it's just jumping into a pool. I get myself into a kind of trance. I engage the world, but it's also wonderful to just escape. I try to find the purities out of the confusion. It's pretty old-fashioned, but it's fun.

Love and despair go hand in hand.

Most novels I come across have all the excitement of a long trip on a bus with a sensitive glee club. Yammer and chat.

My aunts told wonderful stories. Not to me, but to each other. We had a very strong family. My mother's sisters loved each other intensely. The uncles loved each other intensely.

My dad read history, about a book a day, but only after he retired as a successful bank and insurance man.

Randomness I love. And I still love just a holler right in the middle of an ongoing narrative. Pain or joy, ecstasy.

Some writers are curiously unmusical. I don't get it. I don't get them. For me, music is essential. I always have music on when I'm doing well. Writing and music are two different mediums, but musical phrases can give you sentences that you didn't think you ever had.

When you're not involved, other people's unhappiness seems to be about the funniest damn thing on earth because you think you can solve it, that you are God, that you are above this, and that their unhappiness is just such useless toil and agony. If it's you, it ceases to be a comedy.

My favorite singer to this day is Nat King Cole. I've tried to emulate his phrasing. It is so absolutely beautiful to listen to his lovely voice.

I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

You get a heck of a sound from the church. Can't you hear it in my voice?

The more excited the rooster gets, the higher his voice goes. He's got a little bit of a Barney Fife quality to him.

You'd have a good voice, if it ever came out of your throat.

I love listening to Radio Head's 'Everything in its Right Place' because it's all major chords, it makes you feel really good. It's soothing, it's got a beautiful voice, crazy textures. When I'm down I listen to that song and it really makes me feel good.

One needs a Seer's Vision and an Angel's voice to be of any avail. I do not know of any Indian man or woman today who has those gifts in their most complete measure.

It was he who impressed, time and again, the necessity of singing as nature intended, and - I remember - he constantly warned, don't let the public know that you work. So I went slowly. I never forced the voice.

We tune down a full step when we play but I never miss a note. I've learned how to keep my voice.

While Kuwait is not a democracy, giving only half the population a voice in their government is not a policy this Congress should support and one that I am glad that Kuwait's leaders are changing.

There's plenty for me to do. There are more albums. I'll record as long as I can and as long as my voice works as well as it does now and for as long as people want to hear me.

I worked on my voice for Sweet Dreams, but only to match my speaking voice to Patsy's actual singing voice. That was my way into that character.

John the Baptist was supposed to point the way to the Christ. He was just the voice, not the Messiah. So everybody's calling has dignity to it and God seems to know better than we do what is in us that needs to be called forth.

I found my voice was a reaction to all that voice stuff.

It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.

When on the set of a film, you have to play natural for entire scenes in a very unnatural environment. You have to express emotions and interact with other actors and also use your voice.

That's one strength that Stevie has. She's really not a strong instrumentalist in any way. Her instrument is her voice and her words. And it keeps her focused on the very center of that.

But when they offered this little situation for me to do this voice in this special segment, I found it so incredibly humorous that I said yes, and I enjoyed it. It was fun.

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.

When you're special to a cat, you're special indeed, she brings to you the gift of her preference of you, the sight of you, the sound of your voice, the touch of your hand.

I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary jazz singers. But my intent is to become my own voice, to be able to interpret these songs in my own way.

I get a lot of recognition for my voice. That always surprises me.

I think women have an innate ability to be intuitive with people that they truly love, but they have to trust that inner voice, and I think it is there. I think we are more intuitive than men.