Simon Schama Quotes

The scientist rigorously defends his right to be ignorant of almost everything except his specialty.

I'm not a poet. So the writing process is a difficult one for me.

I haven't got a writer's discipline.

If you're a technology investor, and you decide that you're also going to be a healthcare investor or a green-tech investor, that doesn't usually work out that well. There are reasons why people make their careers studying these things and becoming experts.

Seventy percent of what I write, I throw out. I can write very easily, but writing original things is the hard bit.

People always say, 'Write what you know', but I've always found that to be terrible advice. It's quite limiting, what you know.

I'm not sure why writing for others became harder. Probably a reluctance to give away anything you might conceivably use yourself caused a block. I did it, but it remained hard when it had once been easy.

I've discovered as an author that the process of writing a novel becomes harder over time, not easier. I used to think the reverse must be true, that it would be like any task, and the more I practiced, the more adept I'd become.

I'm unqualified to do anything other than music.

The kind of doctor I want is one who when he's not examining me is home studying medicine.

While some of us may know than others about certain things, it is the thinnest slice of all that is, or could be known. In that sense, we are all profoundly ignorant.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

I can't be bothered to learn Final Draft. I'm not a technical person. Like, when I sing, I just want to sing the melody and write the lyrics.

While in the middle of writing a book, I have a hard time reading other books for pleasure.

Usually, when inspiration strikes late, the light of day reveals that I haven't gotten an idea for a book so much as a psychiatric case study.

Each person feels that he is an 'expert' in one or two fields and just the 'public' in all the others. But you know, probably, from experience that no one is really able to appreciate any display of ability in any field if he himself has not, to a certain degree, taken part in its problems and difficulties at some time.

I've tried writing with music on, but I find it distracting.

I respect people that find writing easy, because I have focus problems. I'll spend five days eating cereal and YouTubing and two hours writing the article.

Whatever it is you do, study it, learn the ins and outs of it, and really work on building your craft.

I never listen to music when I write. It's too much of a distraction.

We all know a lot about something. We all have a passion about something.

The more you learn, the more you learn you don't know.

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.

Where a new guy may only know one or two ways to do something, I know all of the moves, and I've forgotten more stuff than the newer guys might even know.

If you know everything, it keeps you from writing. You don't want a story to burn you out instead of surprising you.