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Im not one of those authors who claims to hear voices in my head or let the characters speak through me, whatever that might mean.
Sep 19, 2025
I have so many different projects, I hear voices in my head - the characters talking all at once - and I have to write to make them stop.
Is it still okay to make fun of schizophrenics? There's a little voice in my head that says no.
Other than the voices in my head, I think I’m pretty normal.
When I was offered the part in Shakespeare In Love a voice in my head said 'not another tights role!
All these screams All these voices in my head
I try to make the voice in my head come out onto the page. I try to make it much more conversational than other writing. I speak everything, so if something sounds right I write it. It's more about sound and the rhythm of speech than written language.
The voices in my head, which I used to think were just passing through, seem to have taken up residence.
I love being by the ocean. It stills the voices in my head.
I needed to turn off the negative voice in my head - I was psyching myself out.
I can hear my brother's voice in my head. Your problem is that you're too emotional. But how can I not be emotional, Rowan? How can I not care?
I've only been to Ireland once, and I felt I would wake up with voices in my head, almost like music, and that if I were a songwriter, I would be very inspired.
I'm not very happy idle. There's always this voice in my head that says, 'I should be writing.
I have voices in my head, but they're all speaking Spanish, and I have NO idea what they're saying.
So all you want is a kiss?" I asked. A little voice in my head said I was heading for one of those slippery slopes. I told the little voice to shut up. "Well, maybe more than one. But basically, yeah.
I don't know about ground rules; but I create the world that arrives with the characters or situation or voice in my head that instigates the piece, whatever form it may take.
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.
I write in order to make the little voices in my head go away. Thus far it hasn't worked.
What a liberation to realize that the 'voice in my head' is not who I am. 'Who am I, then?' The one who sees that.
I can hear President Snow's voice in my head. 'On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the capital, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors.
I think that there are a lot of great studio people but the fewer voices in my head when I'm getting out a draft, the better. I just get it out and then I'll listen to all manner of good ideas. And that's what happens, too, when I'm touring and doing a character on stage.
I think I have a lot of voices in my head and I guess my inner critic is a female.
When I was growing up, my mom told me every story that was happening to her. Most of the stories that come to me are through a female voice in my head. My stories seem to naturally be about females.
I write in different styles because I hear different voices in my head. It would be boring to have always the same voice, point of view.
Every now and then I hear voices in my head, but not very clear. I can't understand what they are saying. It's a mental illness. I have been diagnosed as a manic depressive.
Dialogue saves me. I love writing the conversations between my paper people. For some reason, that is the easiest thing for me. It's like I am a transcriptionist for the voices in my head. I can hear them talking (mentally) and have a gift for getting it on the page.
The problem with listening, of course, is that we don't. There's too much noise going on in our heads, so we never hear anything. The inner conversation simply never stops. It can be our voice or whatever voices we want to supply, but it's a constant racket. In the same way we don't see, and in the same way we don't feel, we don't touch, we don't taste.
The devil's spirit's trapped inside me. My soul is possessed by this devil my new name is Rain Man. So I keep conjuring (demons), sometimes I wonder where these thoughts spawn (Satan) from. I'm just relaying what the voice in my head's saying. Don't shoot the messenger, I'm just friends with the monster that's under my bed. Get along with the voices inside of my head.
I feel the closest to crazy when I'm disagreeing with the voice in my head
If I'm writing about my life, I'm already thinking of anyone in my life who might be reading it, and I'm keeping that as a kind of censorship voice in my head. And then, commenters - I'm keeping that in my head, too.
As I followed him along the sharp black stones, I could hear Link's voice in my head. "Bad move, man. He's gonna kill you, stuff you, and add you to his collection of idiots who followed him back to his creepy cave
Something I wrote quite a few years ago was, "The voices in my head, they don't care what I do, they just want to argue the matter through and through." It is a common mistake, to think you're going to go into some kind of spiritual practice and you're going to be relieved of the human burdens, from human crosses like thought, jealousy, despair - in fact, if anything, these feelings are amplified.
One night when my longing for her was like a fire burning out of control in my heart and my head, I wrote her a letter that just seemed to go on and on. I poured out my whole heart in it, never looking back to see what I'd said because I was afraid cowardice would make me stop. I didn't stop, and when a voice in my head clamored that it would be madness to mail such a letter, that I would be giving her my naked heart to hold in her hand, I ignored it with a child's breathless disregard of the consequences.
The blank page doesn't bother me. It's the voice in my head (not always my own) that gives me the yips. It's worse when I'm not making stuff up.
But it was in this moment, lying in bed late at night, that I first realized that the voice in my head—the running commentary that had dominated my field of consciousness since I could remember—was kind of an asshole.
The good thing about Pittsburgh, it's a good place to be raised... it doesn't tolerate assholes. You're either a good guy or you're a bad guy... When I'm in Los Angeles having these incredibly surreal moments where nobody's saying anything and everybody's talking incessantly, I always have that Pittsburgh voice in my head - shut up, smile, get the job, move on.
I've always been curious about people's psychedelic experiences, and I kind of had this assumption that I was going to have some kind of crazy mindblowing psychedelia thing happening, but actually, it was very quiet, and I didn't have any hallucinations at all. Nothing changed, except that suddenly I could hear the voice of my conscience, which I didn't ever think of as being a real voice. And ever since having that experience, I've had that voice in my head and followed it occasionally.
I'm sorry, was that homophobic? No--I think it was, 'cause I hear that a lot. Dave, What?, You're talking about being gay. You probably secretly are gay. And I'm like listen voice in my head, I'm not! HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU WOULDN'T LIKE IT? HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU WOULDN'T LIKE IT? I know I wouldn't like it, other scarier voice in my head! 'Cause one time while making a sandwich, a cucumber went up my ass. Three times.
There was one sequence of days [making Lincoln in the Bardo] when I had halfway decided to use the historical nuggets, but I wasn't quite sure it would work. I'd be in my room for six or seven hours, cutting up bits of paper with quotes and arranging them on the floor, with this little voice in my head saying, "Hey, this isn't writing!" But at the end of that day, I felt that the resulting section was doing important emotional work
Resistance really takes the shape, for me, in voices in my head telling me why I can't do something or why I should put it off for another day, procrastinate for another day.
The voice in my head has a stutter, and that's really annoying. D-D-D-Dave Dave. What? K-K-K-Kill your p-p-p-parents. L-L-L-Loa... Write it down!
... while I bathed, while I tried but failed to sleep, I considered how I might become more like the women I respected and admired. Surrounded as I was by ambitious, accomplished women, I couldn't ignore the little voice in my head that said maybe I was supposed to shed halfway, and do something significant. Contribute something. Accomplish something. Choose. Be.
Apart from the underlying mystery of all things, there is also another possible specific mystery in this situation: Why did I become so interested in Buddhism, Zen and so on? I seem to have a Buddhist voice in my head, and someone asked me about this recently, saying he was intrigued.
And a secret inward voice in my head was saying (in a strange breathy voice...) Yes, yessss, I will pop round to The Blind Pig. I will 'pop' round because guess who lives at the Blind Pig? It is not a blind pig, it is Alex.
I'm not the only taxpayer who has no idea what he's sending to the IRS. This year, only 28 percent of all Americans will prepare their own tax returns, according to a voice in my head that invents accurate-sounding statistics.
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