Feist Quotes

Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's a pleasure.

People say it's cathartic to write a book, but it turned out to be quite painful!

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

Literature boils with the madcap careers of writers brought to the edge by the demands of living on their nerves, wringing out their memories and their nightmares to extract meaning, truth, beauty.

I have a problem with beginnings... and endings... and middles. But I don't know what else I would do. I find it very, very difficult to write. It takes everything; it's physically and mentally and emotionally exhausting for me. And my neighbours. And my dog.

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.

Writing a novel is like making love, but it's also like having a tooth pulled. Pleasure and pain. Sometimes it's like making love while having a tooth pulled.

Everyone has a certain amount of bad writing to get out of their system.

Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.

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

Writing anything is terribly hard but, alas for me, because I am addicted, a heck of a lot of fun. I often am sorry I ever started writing prose, because it is so hard. But I can't stop.

When I'm writing well, I feel happy. And when I go too long without writing, I begin to implode.

Mine is not a story to tell struggling writers.

A lot of banging in the head has built up over the decades, and for my own sanity, I needed to write. I wanted to see if I could tell an honest, organic story about characters that interest me.

At that time, I had recently finished a book called Amazing Grace, which many people tell me is a very painful book to read. Well, if it was painful to read, it was also painful to write. I had pains in my chest for two years while I was writing that book.

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

Melville locked himself away in his room for months while working on 'Moby Dick.' If I ever decide to write a novel, I hope someone will take pity on me and take me out to dinner instead.

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

Each time, I think I'm never going to write another book. It never gets easier.

I like writing, and I enjoy it. It's painful. You can't get around the pain of writing. I'm still trying to balance on what I think is my creative habit. It varies, but I do know that I need to continue. It helps me with my acting, and the writing helps me be invested in a different way.

Writing has never been that simple for me.

The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.

'The Rose Society' was definitely the hardest book I've ever written, because it's so difficult to stay in that dark space.

The process of writing a book has given me a whole new reverence for writers. Mechanically, it is a brutal process; emotionally, it's incredibly healing.

I hated writing 'Love Warrior.' It's the hardest thing I've every written. I cried.