J. J. Abrams Quotes

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

I don't know why I write what I write.

I've never had a writer's block, but still I think: 'Is it going to happen this time?' You never know what you're going to get; you just put your fingers on the keys and hope.

When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.

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 want to get within myself and write. I really, really want to write.

I don't really love writing. I don't love the feeling of starting a new file. But I love the feeling of overcoming and accomplishing.

I think if I've worked anything through with screenwriting it's that I'm not going to be able to work anything through.

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

I don't know if I want to be a writer.

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?'

The challenge is always as a writer, is this going to work, because it's a very intimate process, and I tend to be very introverted and insular, and when I write, it's in my head.

I have a bad tendency to get rapidly bored with my own material, so rewriting is hard for me. I mean, I already know the story and would rather read something new.

I think every writer doubts themselves, every day. You procrastinate because you're afraid. You're always afraid it's not going to be as good as you want it to be. But, the key is overcoming fear.

For a long time I managed to think two things simultaneously, that I am actually a good playwright, and that the next time I write a play I will be revealed as someone who is no good at all.

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

Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it.

I don't even subscribe to writer's block being a truthful thing. I've had writer's laziness quite often. But I think it's all about sitting down and facing down the blank page and doing it, and I've always been ok at that.

There's a practical problem about time and energy, and a more subtle problem of what it does to a writer's head, to continually analyze why they write, where it all comes from, where it's going to.

It took me ten minutes to write this very sentence. I'm no writer. This is not my calling.

The writing part of my life never changes, because that's just when the inspiration comes.

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 think anything that anyone writes that's any good is going to have a lot of autobiography.

If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.

I once read Updike after writing a first draft, and I wanted to put my own book on the fire. I've since learned to read utter crap while I'm writing: pulp is the thing.