William Styron Quotes

I used to give up writing like some people would give up smoking.

I go into my workroom seven mornings a week. There will only be one or two mornings a week where it seems to be going well, but to earn those days you have to go through slow, slodgy days where your mind feels like porridge.

There's always a part of my brain saying: 'Stop getting comfortable. Don't relax.' Because I find it difficult to write when I'm happy. I have to go out there and get battered up and bruised to write anything. I have to feel something.

I'm always trying. Between every book, I think, 'Well now, it's time to get down to the serious stuff.'

It's always a daily struggle to write.

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.

You just have to sit down and write the next book. I mean, it's not all uncommon for a writer to get a ton of publicity for one book and then not get as much for the next one. I don't worry about that because I try to worry about the one single part of the job I can control: the writing of the book.

I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well.

I don't feel prolific. I feel like I'm plodding along. Each day you sit down, and you hope that you get your work done.

You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm.

My writing life is always a bit disorganized. It's hard for me to get going, but sometimes, once I begin, I go like the wind.

You need to suffer to be interesting.

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

I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they haven't got one immediately available to them, then they usually manage to manufacture it in their private lives.

I can't sit and twiddle my thumbs. I have to start writing even if it's miserable some days.

I'm not too fond of the hard work and the constant battle with self-doubt that goes on when I write, but I figure that's part of the territory.

I jog in the morning and then write for about two hours. There are times when I'm really excited and can't wait to get back to it. But there are days when I don't know what's coming next, and I really have to force it.

The writer's secret is not inspiration - for it is never clear where it comes from - it is his stubbornness, his patience.

I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.

Some days, you will sit down, and you write tens of thousands of words. Others, you have to force yourself to write a single sentence.

The longer I carry on, the more difficult writing seems to get.

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

I dread first drafts! I worry each day that it won't come, that nothing will happen.

Songwriting is a burst of inspiration and then a long bit of work and a tremendous bit of desperation.

Pressure has always been more of a friend than a foe for me with songwriting.