Fran Lebowitz Quotes

When I am not writing, I'm dying.

I think writers worry that you might not exist in some strange way if you're not writing.

I write in order to make the little voices in my head go away. Thus far it hasn't worked.

I wanted so much to write that I couldn't write a word.

I'm simply the happiest, the placidest, when I'm writing, and so I suppose that that, for me, is the final answer. ... It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time.

I do not enjoy writing at all. If I can turn my back on an idea, out there in the dark, if I can avoid opening the door to it, I won't even reach for a pencil.

I would also argue that there is a good chance that an outline will help you stave off any onslaught of writer's block. Let me advise you right up front that I am not a big believer in writer's block. I think writer's block is God's way of telling you one of two things - that you failed to think your material through sufficiently before you started writing, or that you need a day or two off with your family and friends.

If I don't write, I begin to feel unsettled and uneasy, as I gather people do who are not allowed to dream.

Writing is not just a job. It helps me to pray. It's a way of being.

writing is the loneliest job in the world. There's always that frustrating chasm to bridge between the concept and the writing of it. We're a harassed tribe, we writers.

I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me. I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear; my courage is reborn. But, and that is the great question, will I ever be able to write anything great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?

I feel like if writers used writing as therapy we'd have a ton of happy writers.

One writes not to be read but to breathe...one writes to think, to pray, to analyze. One writes to clear one's mind, to dissipate one's fears, to face one's doubts, to look at one's mistakes--in order to retrieve them. One writes to capture and crystallize one's joy, but also to disperse one's gloom. Like prayer--you go to it in sorrow more than joy, for help, a road back to 'grace'.

I think you often have that sense when you write--that if you can spot something in yourself and set it down on paper, you're free of it. And you're not, of course; you've just managed to set it down on paper, that's all.

While I was an addict, I didn't write anything. I didn't have the attention span or the will.

Either I did away with that fear through writing, or in the course of writing, I discovered it was no longer so intrusive or threating. The bottom line is, it's gone.

If I am just home and writing, I become very strange.

Writing is a strong easement for perplexity. My life is a map, spread out with all the rivers and hills showing.

A couple months after my heart attack, fifty-seven years after I'd given it up, I started to write again. I did it for myself alone, not for anyone else, and that was the difference. It didn't matter if I found the words, and more than that, I knew it would be impossible to find the right ones.

I've written some poetry, but...songs have to be more poetic, and I've really gotten to this non-poetic sort of writing.

I'm afraid of coaching, of writer's classes, of writer's magazines, of books on how to write. They give me centipede trouble - you know the yarn about the centipede who was asked how he managed all his feet? He tried to answer, stopped to think about it, and was never able to walk another step.

If he wrote it, he could get rid of it. He had gotten rid of many things by writing them.

I suffer from the disease of writing books and being ashamed of them when they are finished.

When it’s too good, you do it over again. Too good is too easy. If it’s too easy you have to worry. If you’re not lying awake at night worrying about it, the reader isn’t going to, either. I always know that when I get a good night’s sleep, the next day I’m not going to get any work done. Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It’s not all inspirational.

nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing.