Lorrie Moore Quotes

I was aware that there is an expectation that writers inevitably falter at this stage, that they fail to live up to the promise of their first successful book, that the next book never pleases the way the prior one did. It simply increased my sense of being challenged.

The idea for each of the stories in this book came in a moment of belief and was written in a burst of faith, happiness, and optimism. Those positive feelings have their dark analogues, however, and the fear of failure is a long way from the worst of them. The worst - for me, at least - is the gnawing speculation that I may have already said everything that I have to say, and am now only listening to the steady quacking of my own voice because the silence when it stops is just too spooky.

Success is so fleeting; even if you get a good book deal, or your book is a huge success, there's always the fear: 'What about the next one?'

No matter how many awards you've won or how many sales you've got, come the next book it's still a blank sheet of paper and you're still panicking like hell that you've got nothing new to say.

I'm always a bit disappointed when I've finished working on a book.

I'm kind of an insecure artist. I hop from piece to piece. I always think my life depends on every painting. Every painting is my first painting.

Finishing books - and leaving the world you've created - is always a kind of emotionally wrenching experience. I usually cry.

You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it.

I feel like once I say out loud, to the public, what I'm working on, it's never going to be an actual book. So until it's close to done, I keep pretty quiet about my next stuff!

Reading the final copy of my book was like walking down memory lane all over again. Sure, the writing process was emotional, but when I had the final copy in my hands, it was a completely different feeling.

Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.... There's a feeling of relief and satisfaction when you get to the end. A feeling that you have brought your family, your characters, home. Then a sort of post-natal depression and then, very quickly, the horizon of a new book. The consolation that next time I will do it better.

To write fiction is to think that you're doing it wrong - that your work habits are inhibiting you; that you've chosen the wrong subject; that you've chosen the right subject, but that someone else has, unbeknownst to you, already written exactly the book you're laboring over.

I try not to think about the success, because it's pressure to continue making music.

I'm an actor, so I'm never going to feel like I've done enough.

I had a year of panic attacks. I was feeling really pressured, like I could never do it again. With a first novel, you put things on hold because it takes so much mental energy and self-belief to keep on writing.

A weekly column is not always a treat. It can be a tyranny. There are times when I have very little to say. There are times, every year, when I am weighed down with depression. At these times it takes days of slog to force the words on to the page.

Each time you take a good picture, you have the wonderful feeling of exhilaration... and almost instantly, the flip side. You have this terrible, terrible anxiety that you've just taken your last good picture.

Every one of us at Pixar is worried that we're going to be the one to make the dud.

Blank paper always symbolizes the anxiety of the painter.

I never know when a record is finished until it's almost finished.

I'm certainly afraid of not being able to write for some reason. I guess I've had spells of not necessarily writer's block, but something like that. I find that pretty terrifying.

I've written six seasons of a TV show with great help from an incredible staff of writers and other collaborators, but I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing. I've kind of freed myself of the expectation that I ever will.

Every time I've written a book, I'm like, 'Oh, it's so different from the last one. Are they going to like it?'

I think I'm a good joke writer. I'm also very scared that the last joke I wrote is the last joke I'll ever write.

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