Susan Sontag Quotes

My friends tell me that I am an intruder, that I don't really write when I attempt poetry. But those of my friends who write in prose say that I'm no writer when I attempt prose. So really I don't know what to do, I'm in a quandary.

It's so easy to get caught up in your own self-doubt when you're writing. It can be so easy to tell yourself, "Who am I kidding?"

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

I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it's getting harder because I want to improve with every book.

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 wish I could have more faith in my own music. Unfortunately, I don't.

I think writing for me has always been a matter of fear. Writing is fear and not writing is fear. I am afraid of writing and then I'm afraid of not writing.

I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.

I sometimes wish desperately that I could write like someone else, be someone else. No one particularly. Just if I could put the pen down on paper and suddenly come out in a totally different way.

But it is the fear, not the writing that defeats me. Everything is not a masterpiece.

I'm often prone to self-doubt about everything I do.

When I'm writing, I'm locking myself in a room. I'm the worst critic in the world. I write something and then I beat myself up. I'm like "Vin, you're retarded, that makes no sense."

There is no such thing as a secure writer: every novel is an impossible mountain.

I don't associate work with feelings of satisfaction. Rather, guilt, frustration, and resentment of people who write better than I do.

What you believe one day isn't what you believe the next day and I think every writer secretly believes that they may never be able to do write good song or script again, but they can.

Blocks usually stem from fear of being judged. If you imagine the world is listening, you'll never write a line.

Sometimes I love acting but then sometimes I think it's too much for me. And I don't know if it is something that I could do for the rest of my life.

Do not beat up on yourself. Do not criticize your writing as lousy, inadequate, stupid, or any of the evil epithets that you are used to heaping on yourself. Such self-bashing is never useful. If you indulge in it, your writing doesn't stand a chance. So when your mind turns on you, turn it back, stamp it down, shut it up, and keep writing.

I think for every artist it's important to always keep this amount of doubt until the very last day of shooting.

I was starting to wonder if I was ready to be a writer, not someone who won prizes, got published and was given the time and space to work, but someone who wrote as a course of life. Maybe writing wouldn't have any rewards. Maybe the salvation I would gain through work would only be emotional and intellectual. Wouldn't that be enough, to be a waitress who found an hour or two hidden in every day to write?

You must learn to overcome your very natural and appropriate revulsion for your own work.

A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he’s worth something. And if I know for sure that I’m a genius? Why write then? What the hell for?

For the few little successes I may seem to have, there are acres of misgivings and self-doubt.

And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy. But in another way, when I'm writing, what it's about for me is being good on the page. None of that noise could change the way I feel about my writing. Which is not always particularly positive.