Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

Until a book starts forming in your head, you always wonder, 'Am I going to be able to do this again?'

I'm not a poet. So the writing process is a difficult one for me.

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. Sometimes you run over a drunk who's lain down and fallen asleep on the warm pavement. I mean, do you keep going, or what?

To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn't know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up.

There are going to be moments of deep, deep doubts, and you have to have faith that your initial idea was good and just muddle through.

Don't ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.

There's something paralyzing about being a writer that you have to escape. I don't want to think of myself as a guy who's written a bunch of books. The 26 letters distance us from our own hesitations and they make us sound as if we know what we're doing. We know grammar, we know prose, but actually we're all just struggling in the dark, really.

It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.

You have to not listen to the nay sayers because there will be many and often they'll be much more qualified than you and cause you to sort of doubt yourself.

My writing is progressing slowly, but at least it's moving forward. I'm sure that's the case. The only problem is that I'm never absolutely certain that what I've written is any good.

I don't know if I have a career or not, or where it ends or it begins. I have been working, doing what I do for a long time. But my creative process has always been so tortuous.

I find writing very difficult. It's hard and it hurts sometimes, and it's scary because of the fear of failure and the very unpleasant feeling that you may have reached the limit of your abilities.

I have a problem with beginnings... and endings... and middles. But I don't know what else I would do. I find it very, very difficult to write. It takes everything; it's physically and mentally and emotionally exhausting for me. And my neighbours. And my dog.

I found my first novel difficult. I don't want to make it sound like it's any more difficult than driving a cab or going to any other job, but there are so many opportunities for self-doubt, that you just kind of need to soldier on.

I tell you it's no joke to paint a portrait. I wonder that I am not more timid when I begin. I feel almost certain that I can do it. It seems very simple. I don't think of the time that is sure to come when I almost despair, when the whole thing seems hopeless.

Right now, I have no idea what I will write or if I will write again.

Anytime you write something, you go through so many phases. You go through the 'I'm a Fraud' phase. You go through the 'I'll Never Finish' phase. And every once in a while you think, 'What if I actually have created what I set out to create, and it's received as such?'

At a certain point in the writing of any book, you become absolutely certain that it's terrible and is only getting more terrible with every word you write. This is normal. You just have to keep going, push your way through, and have faith that, through practice and experience and determination, you will get to the end.

Someday I would like to be the kind of writer who barrels through a draft, but I can't even seem to barrel through an interview like this, so I imagine I have a long way to go.

I know there are writers who like to say that every novel is hard, and it doesn't get easier. That may be the case, and I've only written two. But the first, to me, was characterized by an enduring oscillation between perseverance and a profound doubt.

There were points in my career where I thought, 'Maybe I'm done. Maybe I've written everything there is to write.' Now I've learned that it's just working itself out. You have to let it do it.

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

Art is all about giving yourself these terrifying challenges, these peaks to climb. You're at the bottom of the mountain at the start of every new project thinking, 'Am I going to make it?'

Trying to write new music is definitely daunting, but I try not to overthink it.

I have to get three pages done every day, and there's usually a point about 150 pages in where everything falls apart, where all the plans are for naught. The book has become something else, and I have a nervous breakdown, and then I submit to what the book has become, and I keep going, and that's a terrible and then a great time.