Matthew Weiner > Quotes

“I keep going to a lot of places and ending up somewhere I've already been”
― Matthew Weiner

“Change is neither good or bad; it simply is.”
― Matthew Weiner written for Don Draper on 'Mad Men'

“Her Mother and Father were especially blind to feelings. Her Father denied he even had feelings and her Mother assumed everyone shared hers. Heather didn’t know for years that her ability to see people’s feelings and even feel them sometimes was unusual and when she discovered that the cruelty and rudeness that adults and friends inflicted on each other was unintentional or at least uninformed, she decided to withdraw, overwhelmed by the pain of typical human behavior.”
― Matthew Weiner, Heather, the Totality

“The most defeatist thing I hear is, "I’m going to give it a couple of years." You can’t set a clock for yourself. If you do, you are not a writer. You should want it so badly that you don’t have a choice. You have to commit for the long haul. There’s no shame in being a starving artist. Get a day job, but don’t get too good at it. It will take you away from your writing.”
― Matthew Weiner

“Artists frequently hide the steps that lead to their masterpieces. They want their work and their career to be shrouded in the mystery that it all came out at once. It’s called hiding the brushstrokes, and those who do it are doing a disservice to people who admire their work and seek to emulate them. If you don’t get to see the notes, the rewrites, and the steps, it’s easy to look at a finished product and be under the illusion that it just came pouring out of someone’s head like that. People who are young, or still struggling, can get easily discouraged, because they can’t do it like they thought it was done. An artwork is a finished product, and it should be, but I always swore to myself that I would not hide my brushstrokes.”
― Matthew Weiner

“You can’t set a clock for yourself. If you do, you are not a writer.”
― Matthew Weiner

“In life we often have to do things that just are not our bag.”
― Matthew Weiner

“[Peggy Olson]: Just try it.”
― Matthew Weiner

“Most cultures made beer before they had an alphabet.”
― Matthew Weiner

“despite all the machinery of civilization devoted to splitting up and moving on, Mark couldn't imagine the strength needed to actually do such a thing.”
― Matthew Weiner, Heather, the Totality

“I hope one day you find out what you really care about.
I hope one day you learn to solve a problem without sleeping with it.”
― Matthew Weiner

“why should she care about them? didn't both of her parents deserve to be ignored for being exhaustingly needy of her time and affection? hadn't they earned it? other parents acted similarly but Heather's were the most suffocating”
― Matthew Weiner, Heather, the Totality

“that's no job for a white man”
― Matthew Weiner, Matthew Weiner. Mad Men