Pankaj Mishra Quotes
If your writing collides with the conventional wisdom, there's going to be some kind of friction.
Quotes to Explore
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I've been writing a lot of poetry recently. It helps me think and work things out.
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Once you research an idea, you begin to develop a perspective. Writing about anything in public, often in real time, has helped fashion my views.
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Turn your wounds into wisdom.
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I used to kind of go for it, right? Like, I'd be the one who would say, 'All right, there's Kate Moss. I'm going to try to make out with her.'
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All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.
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I've got plenty of quirks. I go to an office early in the morning. Early in the morning is really good writing time. I take anywhere between six to eight showers a day. I'm not exaggerating. I'm not a germaphobe: it's all about a fresh start.
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When you're writing a story in bits and pieces, month in and month out, there really isn't time or space for reflection, no room to learn what those scripts had to teach you.
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It takes me a long time writing books. It takes me about five years to write a book, and when I'm done, the last thing I want to do is to do it again.
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I'm not the kind of director who aims to send a message out.
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With age comes common sense and wisdom.
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Very often, writing a song is a process that happens to me rather than one that I instigate. I feel a song coming on and, like a sneeze; I wait for it until it comes.
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My highest point was the first thing I won, a short story competition in a women's magazine in the Eighties. It was the first time I'd had my writing validated, and the first thing I'd ever shown anyone else.
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As much as I enjoy traveling and playing on stage as an artist, I really find my true sense of purpose in a room writing a song.
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Be aware of who in your life is actually interested in hearing you discuss your writing, and who's just asking to be polite. Listening to writers talk about their work is often excruciatingly dull.
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Movie making is not like other art forms, like painting, or writing a novel, because that can be digested or interpreted... It takes two years to make each one of these, and it's always judged on money.
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When I'm writing books, something weird happens; and the result is the books contain a large amount of what you could call 'supernaturalism.' As a writer, I find I need that to explain the world I'm writing about.
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I was writing at a really young age, but it took me a long time to be brave enough to become a published writer, or to try to become a published writer. It's a very public way to fail. And I was kind of scared, so I started out as a ghost writer, and I wrote for other series, like Disney 'Aladdin' and 'Sweet Valley' and books like that.
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When people are very damaged, they can often meet the world with a kind of defiance.
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Song writing has been a lifeline for me.
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Academic writing you have to get right. Fiction you have to get plausible. And there's a world of difference. In a way, if someone says this didn't feel exactly right, I don't care. But that is not okay to do in academia - it's not about feeling. You want to establish a pretty solid case. So did this allow me to express things differently? Absolutely. Another thing I've been thinking about as an academic: our writing style is expository, and in fiction, withholding information matters quite a bit. Withholding things in academia - there's no place for that!
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I don't think there's ever a right time to have kids. I'm actually pretty glad it's happened quite young.
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Starbucks is my main fix and it's usually you people working in there - sometimes they're actually shaking. It just makes me feel horrendous because I've been in that situation.
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If I'm a phenomenon, it makes me feel like I have no purpose.
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If your writing collides with the conventional wisdom, there's going to be some kind of friction.
