Geoff Dyer Quotes

So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having marred it.

For a long time I managed to think two things simultaneously, that I am actually a good playwright, and that the next time I write a play I will be revealed as someone who is no good at all.

In the back of my mind was the constant hankering, almost yearning, to write but something always stopped me in my tracks. Or if I did find my way to put a pen to paper or finger on a keyboard I'd give up after a few minutes. I'd find other things to do: Anything but writing.

I had a period where I thought I might not be good enough to publish.

As a writer, you live in permanent self-doubt; you're on permanent trial.

I've tried writing. Two days later I'd go visit it and say, Jesus Christ, who wrote this crap?

Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.

Every day I wake up afraid that I won't be able to write, that today is the day it has left me.

I always think the insecurity is going to go away, but it's always there. Only bad writers think they're good.

If you're a writer, you're constantly doubting yourself.

I've had times in the past where I wanted to give up acting, get my head out of the arts because it was like my constitution couldn't deal with it. My job means I get judged on my looks; I get discriminated against because of my sex; I take on roles that are so two-dimensional... you can go mad trying to fill that third dimension.

Desperate? So what? I'm desperate, too!" Fenoglio snapped at her. "My story is foundering in misfortune, and these hands here," he said holding them out to her, "don't want to write anymore! I'm afraid of words Meggie! 'Once they were like honey, now they're poison, pure poison! But what is a writer who doesn't love words anymore? What have I come to? This story is devouring me, crushing me, and I'm it's creator!

My verses stand gawping a bit. I never get used to this. They've lived here long enough.

When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.

I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.

I didn't want to play these people any more songs and have them say that they weren't good enough. So my response was to just not be able to write anymore. I know that's not the healthiest of responses.

When it comes to the personal essays I write, I just convince myself that no one will ever read them.

In my case, the long gaps between my books have got quite a lot to do with lack of confidence. A lot of the time when I'm not writing I start thinking I can't do it.

It's a phobia I have. I never assume I'm going to be able to write another album after I finish one.

But a lot of writers - and I'm one of them - do tend to feel dissatisfied. It makes you a little hard to live with, but it's a goad and does keep you alert and restless.

Usually, when inspiration strikes late, the light of day reveals that I haven't gotten an idea for a book so much as a psychiatric case study.

Every word I write I suspect the next day.

A lot of times, I don't want to listen to my stuff, because I'm thinking maybe I didn't do my best.

You always feel like a hack and a fraud when you're writing. It's just how it goes.

For years, when I was popular, I would face the blank page to write, and I couldn't think of anything that I thought was good enough.