Miriam Toews Quotes

There's a danger in romanticizing what it means to be a writer. Because what it really means is hard, hard work. It means tearing your hair out. Feeling like your head is about to explode.

Every writer I know has trouble writing.

I huff and puff and struggle with every sentence, paragraph and page - sometimes every word as well.

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

Writing doesn't come easily to me. It gets more and more difficult.

Writing has been as difficult for me as for people who don't like to write and as little fun.

Once in a while, when I first started to write pieces, I would try to write to a reader other than myself. I always failed. I would freeze up.

Writing has never been that simple for me.

Yeah, writers do hate writing.

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

I find writing extraordinarily difficult and not very pleasurable, though I find having done it very pleasurable. I won't lie about that.

I envy people who write easily. I enjoy the process, but it's not easeful for me.

Mine is not a story to tell struggling writers.

I find writing very difficult. It's hard and it hurts sometimes, and it's scary because of the fear of failure and the very unpleasant feeling that you may have reached the limit of your abilities.

Yes, it's hard to write. But it's harder not to.

I am not - thank heavens - one of those 'driven' writers who spend a fortnight buckled with empty fright over an untouched page only to wake at two in the morning feverish with paragraphs.

I write very, very slowly, and for me, I have to summon all sorts of resources to make one of these pieces work.

Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day.

I think I wrote 'The Trysting Place' in about three weeks. But it was inexperience that made me have to do that. I didn't feel good about the book all the time I was writing it. It felt a bit like wading through molasses.

With writing, I love doing it, but there's that love-hate relationship: You're not having a good run, you've hit a wall; it's frustrating.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.

I've tried writing. Two days later I'd go visit it and say, Jesus Christ, who wrote this crap?

You are just in the middle of a struggle with words which are really very stubborn things, with a blank page, with the damn thing that you use to write with, a pen or a typewriter, and you forget all about the reader when you are doing that.

Writing is agony for me. I work at it eight hours every day, hoping to get six pages, but I am satisfied with three.

I'm a little harsh. When people say, 'I have writers block. What do you suggest?' I say, 'If you can't write, don't write. No one needs your writing. Don't torture yourself.'