William Cowper Quotes

There's no such thing as mental illness. We're all mentally ill and we're all haunted by something, and some people manage to find a way to ride it out so that they don't wind up needing extra help. So I think that "mental illness," as a term, is garbage. Everybody is in various states of needing to transcend something.

One reason I don't suffer Writer's Block is that I don't wait on the muse, I summon it at need.

There's no such thing as writer's block. I'm brilliant all the time every day. It never stops.

Some people play best when they're frustrated and mad. I play my best when I'm happy. I really, truly do.

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on. But routinely when I finish a book, I think, "What will I do? Where will I get an idea?" And a kind of low-level panic sets in. And then eventually something happens. I don't know. If I knew how it happened I would repeat the process, but I don't know - something just occurs to me.

If one is the kind of creature I am and wants to do the kind of writing I want to do, an undisturbed bourgeois existence with no distractions seems in order. A single meeting outside the family upsets one's whole inner web, makes one start off on two-days' thinking and weighing, destroys a delicate balance etc. etc. ... I now have enough friends to last me a lifetime and that is enough. I am going to close the doors and hibernate at least for a couple of years. I am frightfully depressed about my work. It seems to me perfectly mediocre.

I often lose motivation, but it's something I accept as normal.

I think even lying on my bed I can still do something.

I always have a few ideas that are percolating, and then after I've finished a book and it's a year later, and things are sort of festering and things are disgusting in my house and I have to get back to work, whatever project I keep thinking about is the one I end up working on. Sort of a very simple process of elimination.

Something always made me save myself. Either the Betty Ford Center or going onstage to perform in the theater when many people didn't think I could do it.

There are days when I don't feel motivated and I don't want to get up to go to practice. I'm a very goal-oriented person, so I set short-term goals and try to reach those goals. And when I have those days, I think about those goals, and it gets me motivated.

I did actually sit down with a blank sheet of paper once. I think the phone rang and that was the end of my literary career.

Your thinking today determines your performance today.

If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway.

There's so much shame involved in not being like everyone else. But I learned that the things that made me unique were good. Dealing with problems can be awful. But in the end I got positive results. I don't think I would have been a writer if I didn't have anxiety.

The secret to writing is writing. Lots of people I know talk about writing. They will tell me about the book they are going to write, or are thinking about writing, or may write some day in the future. And I know they will never do it. If someone is serious about writing, then they will sit down every day and put some words down on paper.

I'm dealing with a lot of scary things. I think you have to react to them. And you either laugh at them or you go insane.

One would think a writer would be happy here — if a writer is ever happy anywhere.

We all need mantras, I guess - stories we tell ourselves to keep us going.

In the beginning, there was a kind of energy that - like an urgency to express myself, and the songs just couldn't be held in. But I think it changes, the nature of how that - what that energy is. And I need to court the muse in a much more serious way.

There are days now where I think, "Oh man, that would've been a great entry," but I'm putting the pen down until I clear my head, or think of another book idea.

And that almost everyone was struggling to wake up, to be loved, and not feel so afraid all the time. That's what the cars, degrees, booze, and drugs were about.

It's not my fault I can't be like you, okay? I don't get up in the morning thinking the world is one big, shiny, happy place, okay? That's just not how I work. I don't think I can be fixed.

I don't think that stuff is gone - I just don't want to dwell on it. There's a difference. As I said, I think we all have tendencies as writers, and I think we all have experience that we bring as readers to each project.

Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles; do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.