Some authors, when starting a novel, imagine a place first. Others, a character starts taking shape in their head. I start with a hook, a situation, a ‘what if.’ – Linwood Barclay
Anything based on ancient texts is difficult for a modern reader to get their head around. – Joanne Harris
Sometimes things just fall out of your head on the paper, and if you’re smart, you learn not to touch them. – Laurie Halse Anderson
I’m not a headline guy. I know that as long as I was following Ruth to the plate I could have stood on my head and no one would have known the difference. – Lou Gehrig
If you can’t go through it, find a way around it. Don’t spend all your time banging your head. – Lenny Wilkens
Throughout the years I have tried to hone my skills to gain mastery over the music in my head. – Kip Winger
If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing. – Marc Chagall
I’ve started movies without screenplays both on ‘Clash’ and on ‘Hulk,’ and that is tremendously stressful because you have a tendency to overcompensate with effects. You haven’t tested it in your head. You didn’t run it over and over again and covered all of the plot holes and figure it out. It’s a marathon that you sprint. – Louis Leterrier
Our solution on ‘The Simpsons’ is to do jokes that people who have an education, or some frame of reference, can get. And for the ones who don’t, it doesn’t matter, because we have Homer banging his head and saying, ‘D’oh!’ – Matt Groening
Whenever the names of the disciples are enumerated in the New Testament, St. Peter’s stands at their head. – John Strachan
I always had an awful lot going on in my head, always telling myself stories, very vivid imagination. – Kate Thompson
Actors are such wonderful creatures and such wonderful instruments. It’s always different on the page or in my head. I hear it differently. I see it differently. And then, you give it to an actor, and it comes alive in a way that you didn’t expect. – Kelly Masterson
I subscribe to ‘National Geographic,’ ‘Scientific American,’ ‘Discover,’ and a slew of other magazines. And it is while reading articles for pleasure and interest that an interesting ‘What if?’ will pop into my head. – James Rollins
I should be soaring away with my head tilted slightly toward the gods, feeding on the caviar of Shakespeare. An actor must act. – Laurence Olivier
That Oscar can be a jinx… It can… damage irreparably one’s relations with family, friends. It’s an uneasy head that wears the crown. – Joan Fontaine
If you’re serious about what you’re doing, you’ve got to keep your head and follow your instinct. Maybe you won’t reach the same dizzy heights as others, but you will get something back. – Jonny Lee Miller
If you could hear the insane stuff going on in my head, it would scare the hell out of you. Probably. Or fascinate you. Depends on how easily you’re startled, I guess. – Jenny Lawson
Sometimes when I’m really enjoying a book, I’ll read a sentence or paragraph and just think – how can someone’s head be wired in such a way that they’d come up with that? – Joe Abercrombie
You have to write the story that’s at the front of your head. There is no point in trying to write for the market; it won’t ring true. – Jojo Moyes
There was this moment, particularly after I had my first child, where I felt like, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever make a record, or if this is always going to be something just floating around in my head.’ – Karen Elson
Each year thousands of embryos, no bigger than the head of a pin, are created in the process of in vitro fertilization, with the support of Congress, by the way. – Lois Capps
