Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration, and Get to Work

I don’t hold myself to longer hours; if I did, I wouldn’t gain by it. The only reason I write is because it interests me more than any other activity I’ve ever found. I like riding, going to operas and concerts, travel in the west; but on the whole writing interests me more than anything else. If I made a chore of it, my enthusiasm would die. I mak

John Adams (b. 1947) “My experience has been that most really serious creative people I know have very, very routine and not particularly glamorous work habits,” Adams said in a recent interview. “Because creativity, particularly the kind of work I do—which is writing large-scale pieces, either symphonic music or opera music—is just, it’s very labo

Chuck Close (b. 1940) “In an ideal world, I would work six hours a day, three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon,” Close said recently. That’s what I always liked to do. Especially since my kids were born. I used to work at night, but when my kids were born I couldn’t just work at night and sleep during the day. So that’s when I

A solid routine, he added, “saves you from giving up.”

These days she begins work in the late morning, after some time reading the newspaper, checking Facebook, and answering e-mails. She keeps writing into the afternoon, taking breaks to stretch her legs, look out the window, and drink a “massive amount” of Diet Coke on ice. In the evening she generally watches TV or a movie to relax. “That works best

“Writing isn’t hard work, it’s a nightmare,” Roth said in 1987.

“I shall always be depressed,” Beckett concluded, “but what comforts me is the realization that I can now accept this dark side as the commanding side of my personality. In accepting it, I will make it work for me.”

For years I said if I could only find a comfortable chair I would rival Mozart.