Lynn Nottage Quotes

With me a change of trouble is as good as a vacation.

I don't write well when I'm sitting there sweating about every single phrase.

I hate writing.

There's a lot of stress... but once you get in the car, all that goes out the window.

No one stopped me from playing when I was alone, but there were times when I wasn't able to, though I wanted to... There were times when nothing played back. Writers call it 'writer's block.' For kids there are other names for that feeling, though kids don't usually know them.

More than periods where I don't write anything, I have periods where I just write junk and I know I'm writing junk but I can't stop.

Certainly I had a really terrible time with 'Emotionally Weird.' When I finished it, I thought, 'I can't write any more.'

Usually halfway through a book I have a serious depression, so I go on safari on my ranch in South Africa, or fishing off my island in the Seychelles. When I come back and re-read it, I think: 'What was all that about, Smith? It's fine, just get on with it.'

Sometimes I like to vent.

You're always looking for good scripts and when they're not always forthcoming you go mad.

I think I need the demons in order to write, but the demons have gone. It bothers me a lot. I've tried and tried, but I just can't seem to find a melody.

When I can't write, it depresses me.

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

I never get writer's block, but I do have days where I crawl under the duvet.

I started out writing stories because that's all I wanted to read, but now I don't know if I'll ever write one again.

It's nice to get to do other things and not worry about fighting.

I'm certainly afraid of not being able to write for some reason. I guess I've had spells of not necessarily writer's block, but something like that. I find that pretty terrifying.

I'm sitting in my office trying to squeeze a story from my head. It is that kind of morning when you feel like melting the typewriter into a bar of steel and clubbing yourself to death with it. (“Advance Notice”)

I find it painful when I'm without anything. But I work in multiple fields. If I can't write, I find myself taking photographs. I can go on the road and perform. But the most important thing for me is writing, and when I hit those walls, it's painful.

I am slow. A sentence often takes an hour to compose before I throw it out. What can you do?

You don't know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word.

Writing is like pulling your hair out. You have nothing, and you can't think of anything, but you have to think of something.

People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.

Hours later the blank sheet still stared at me, and I beat my fist against the desk in fury and fustration, striking it so hard my hand bled. That is how heavy a secret can become. It can make blood flow easier than ink.

I remember a point in [writing] the story where I said, "This isn't working, I should go and buy something at the supermarket or my wife will kill me." Then I said, "No, I'll go on."