Harper Lee Quotes

I love writing, and I think I'm kind of a workaholic. I'm happiest when I'm working.

When I'm really fixated on a bit of writing, I can easily spend six days without leaving the house and barely leaving my room.

I didn't really get serious about my own writing until I was convinced it was something that I wanted to do, that I wanted to spend that much time alone.

There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed.

If you can't stand your own company alone in a room for long hours, or, when it gets tough, the feeling of being in a locked cell, or, when it gets tougher still, the vague feeling of being buried alive-then don't be a writer.

Writing is a wholetime job: no professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it.

I have nothing in my life besides my work. I am obsessed with it. I leave my house only when I'm forced to.

The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps.

I've spent my life alone in a room with a typewriter.

I think about fanaticism - oblivion awaits, especially for minor writers, so you have to be a fanatic; you have to be a crank to keep going, but on the other hand, what else would you do with the rest of your life? You gotta do something.

The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement - if you can't deal with this, you needn't apply.

I'm always writing. I'm an obsessive. It's not because I'm a disciplined person. It's because I'm crazy about it.

Writing is the most important thing in my life - above marriage.

I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.

I'm not patient - and I'm getting more impatient as I get older - but I am disciplined about writing, and I want that on my tombstone: 'He wasn't patient, but he was disciplined.'

Becoming a writer is not a 'career decision' like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don't choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you're not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.

If I'm doing a scene that requires a lot of focus, I'll just take myself away and do what I have to do.

'Back to Blood' really took it out of me. While I was writing it, I just never went out anywhere, except to the gym.

So many writers don't like to write... I like to write, and sometimes I'm afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don't want to leave it. And as a result, I'll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.

Ever since I started writing in college, I have, save for a few short breaks here and there, been working away on something. I love it, I need it, and so it never occurred to me to put writing on the back burner.

I'm enslaved to writing to the point where I sacrifice almost everything else.

I think it's hard to make a living as a writer, but I think it's hard to work at McDonald's too.... I think the commitment is to get up everyday and say, "I'm a writer, therefore what I'm supposed to do today is write." And to do that, and to do that and to do that.

I love writing. I never feel really comfortable unless I am either actually writing or have a story going. I could not stop writing.

If you can quit, then quit. If you can't quit, you're a writer.

This is the way you look at the poorest details of the world resurfaced, after you've been driving for a long time -- you feel their singleness and precise location and the forlorn coincidence of you being there to see them.