E. B. White Quotes

writers just kept on staring at nothing until they wrote something. Might be two minutes or two weeks.

I used to get up and write every day, even if I wasn't working on a specific thing. Now, when I have a thing I'm in the middle of, I do that, but when I'm not, time can go by when I'm not writing at all.

If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn't arrive.

A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.

Sitting around and waiting for your muse is not the best choice.

A manuscript under way always gave me something to do; only while enduring the aimlessness between books was I truly glum.

The hardest part of doing anything creatively is just getting up and doing.

I often feel like not writing! Sometimes I overcome it by just sitting there until writing happens. Sometimes I don't write, because books often need periods of percolation.

She says there are stories everywhere and that people who wait for the right one to come along before setting pen to paper end up with very empty pages.

I don't wait for inspiration. I'm not, in fact, quite sure what inspiration is, but I'm sure that if it is going to turn up, my having started work is the precondition of its arrival.

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again.

If you wait for inspiration, you're not a writer, but a waiter.

If you're waiting for inspiration, you'll wait until you're dead.

Writing is?waiting for the word that may not be there until next Tuesday.

Don't wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.

This book was written in those long hours I spent waiting for my wife to get dressed to go out. And if she had never gotten dressed at all this book would never have been written.

... I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of "writer's block". I was more inclined to think of it as "writer's impatience", and to follow Arthur Koestler's dictum: "Soak; and wait.

If you're not creating, you're waiting.

When you get an idea, go and write. Don't waste it in conversation.

An author who waits for the right 'mood' will soon find that 'moods' get fewer and fewer until they cease altogether.

A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.

The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn't show up invited, eventually she just shows up.

Don’t waste time waiting for inspiration. Begin, and inspiration will find you.

I procrastinate, and I push writing to the last available moment, because I don't like to settle on anything. I guess you can call it indecision or you can call it holding out for inspiration.

I show up and try, but I may have to ask myself if I need to wait and let myself regenerate and take a break. I know that this thing that makes the stories has to be treated gently. So sometimes I'll just stop and let the well fill up. With my work, sometimes I hate doing it, but I love having done it. The key is to keep doing it.