Time & Perspective Quote by Rupert Holmes

Holmes makes speed sound like a vice disguised as a virtue, and that’s the joke with teeth. On the surface he’s bragging: look how fast I type. But the punchline undercuts the swagger: “It’s a miracle they even give me a royalty.” That self-deprecation is doing real work. It reframes authorship not as godlike control but as a frantic act of transcription, like he’s barely qualified to take dictation from his own imagination.

The key move is the line about “characters… living in real time.” Holmes isn’t claiming he invents them so much as he chases them. It’s a playful myth of creativity that flatters the work while dodging the ego. Instead of “I made this,” he offers “this happened and I managed to get it down.” For a composer-songwriter who built a career on narrative craft (witty story-songs, tight plotting, twist endings), the metaphor fits: timing is everything. If the characters are “living,” then delay is betrayal; the writer’s job is to keep pace with their momentum before it evaporates.

There’s also a sly economic subtext. Royalties are supposed to reward ownership, authorship, intellectual property. Holmes jokes that the characters deserve the check, not him. In a culture that romanticizes the tortured genius, he gives us the harried stenographer, proud not of suffering but of logistics. The intent isn’t to demystify art so much as to remystify it on friendlier terms: creativity as collaboration with voices in your head, plus a very fast keyboard.