Philip Roth Quotes

The biggest mistake you can make is assuming that creativity will hit you all at once and the muse will carry you to the end of the book on feather wings while 'Foster the People' plays gently in the background. Storytelling is work. Pleasurable work, usually, but it is work.

I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. I have to work really hard at it to try and say the things I'm concerned with.

Of course I knew that writing was terrifically hard work and that there was no secret code, as in a video game, that would unlock Tolstoy-mode, enabling me to crank out canon-worthy novellas before lunch.

I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.

Writing is part intuition and part trial and error, but mostly it's very hard work.

There's a mystery to writing, and you don't really know where most of it comes from.

I enjoy talking to groups who are interested in the writing process or the industry. I never teach - because truthfully, I don't know how it all works; it just does. Sort of magic-like. But I love to share my experiences and perspectives.

When I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I'm trying to do. I'm frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper.

At the outset, my notion of being a writer was that you would have moments of inspiration and moments of frustration, when you'd crumple up your pages and toss them away. On one side, the dustbin would fill up, and on the other side, pages would rise into a novel.

Honestly, I feel pretty awed anytime I meet just about any writer. I get how hard it is to write and make a living from it, but there's also this almost magical force you need to tap into, and I'm amazed by anyone who can do it.

Each time, I think I'm never going to write another book. It never gets easier.

I really just sat down to write. I mean, I did what most writers do when something happens that's overwhelming, fascinating, moving, all of that.

I find writing really hard, but then, every author I know finds writing really hard work.

I have a great respect for people that write. I don't know how they do it every day... or do novels that they have to use their minds instead of just their memories. It's tough duty.

Everything can be grist for the muse. Sometimes, writers draw on personal experiences. 'Ghoul' was just that.

I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but then you write the version that you can write.

Writing a novel - unlike operating a piece of heavy machinery, say, or cooking a chicken - is not a skill that can be taught. There is no standard way of doing it, just as there is no means of telling, while you're doing it, whether you're doing it well or badly. And merely because you've done it well once doesn't mean you can do it well again.

You know that feeling when you finish a final exam and you think, 'I never want to do that again'? Well I have the same feeling when I finish a novel. Each time I say, 'I think I may retire now' and then after six months the ideas start to churn again. I could never stop.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

Somebody said writing is easy, you just sit down at your typewriter and open a vein. It depends on the book. Some, I have to do quite a lot of research, which I like. Others are much closer to me.

I just sit down and the page just comes out and I look at it and the elements that appear on that page have a lot to do with what's going on in my life.

I'm one of the lucky writers: plots come easily to me.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

Writing is something I want to explore. If I were to do it, I would want it to be not a book made by a YouTuber; I would really want to respect that craft of literature and just be an author.

I have to always remember, writing is really hard.