Tom Wolfe Quotes

I have forgotten my rave reviews and memorized my vicious ones - like most writers.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

When I create something, it's got to be special, and it can't just be to throw something out there because I feel like I'm Missy.

I can sit down at a piano or with a guitar and just chug away for hours and be perfectly content with whatever comes out. But when it comes to something that somebody else is going to listen to, then I do feel a great deal of pressure to do something that's exceptional, at least in what I consider to be at the limits of what I can do.

If I even lose my glasses or make a mistake. I become really disappointed in myself.

Writing is challenging work because it's so easy to get consumed with how it's going, what's going to happen to it, who's going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.

And if I let myself down, appear on stage when I'm not looking my best, it's not fun for me. I just beat myself up about it.

I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they're no good. I don't throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight.

I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.

I go eat a sandwich for lunch and have a milk shake and miss going to the gym for 10 days, and somebody snaps a picture of me on the beach, and all of a sudden, I've lost it. Why do I need to be perfect all the time?

I don't care what people think of me as a person, but I do care what people think of my work, and whether I'm investing enough into it.

I wish you could make money and people never saw what you did. Then you could relax and not care about how bad you are.

From a young age, I've had a desire to put forward this perfect image, whatever perfect was.

I'm never happy with my performances. I always want to prove more and more things.

When I do something wrong, I take it pretty personal because I want to be perfect.

I rarely like the music I make. It's like nothing's good enough. I just stay in my head, waiting on the next best beat, so I can do something better than what I did.

I don't mind people liking or not liking me. If you make something and then in the back of your mind you think it could have been a bit better, that can hurt a bit.

I write a lyric, but when I reread it, I think it's awful and either hide it or crumple it up.

I start a book and I want to make it perfect, want it to turn every color, want it to be the world. Ten pages in, I've already blown it, limited it, made it less, marred it. That's very discouraging. I hate the book at that point. After a while I arrive at an accommodation: Well, it's not the ideal, it's not the perfect object I wanted to make, but maybe—if I go ahead and finish it anyway—I can get it right next time. Maybe I can have another chance.

I have a tendency sometimes to get too logical with what I'm writing, just because I want it to be kind of perfect.

I think most writers can't really think about their work without a kind of revulsion. And I think that's probably why we keep going back and trying again, trying to do better each time.

Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.

I never understand how writers can succumb to vanity - what you work the hardest on is usually the worst.

It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.

If you criticize what you’re doing too early you’ll never write the first line.