Georgia Toffolo Quotes

Every writer knows that unless you were born gifted with either supreme confidence or outsize ego, handing in your work holds, in some cases, admitted terror. If that's too strong, at least fairly high anxiety.

With the first novel, I had to tell myself, 'No one is ever going to read it, so you might as well just write it.' With the second, I was pretty sure someone was going to read it.

In New York I was always so scared of saying that I wrote fiction. It just seemed like, 'Who am I to dare to do that thing here? The epicenter of publishing and writers?' I found all that very intimidating and avoided writing as a response.

I think it must be very hard to be one of the new young writers who are urged to put themselves forward when it may be the last thing on earth they'd be good at.

It's way easier to write for other people. Yourself isn't in it. When you write for yourself, you overthink, and you become paranoid. When you write for others, it isn't about you.

I'll always struggle over saying I'm a writer, even if I won the Booker Prize.

I have turned away from the thought of writing fiction in the past through what I suppose is, actually, fear. The direct, raw invitation for the reader to come in and explore my imagination is fairly scary for me so I have busied myself with so much else.

I always think the insecurity is going to go away, but it's always there. Only bad writers think they're good.

There was a terrible fear for me when I started writing, which was that if you'd been denied unbelievably tumultuous experience, you didn't have permission to write.

For years, when I was popular, I would face the blank page to write, and I couldn't think of anything that I thought was good enough.

I think we're so often, as writers, afraid of writing something that is less than perfect, and that fear paralyzes us. I'm a big fan of writing less than perfect things.

Writing is inherently scary.

I'd be far too self-conscious and insecure if I suspected my editor might be a better novelist than I.

When I was young, I kept trying to read 'Moby-Dick', and I couldn't get that far into it. And I kept thinking, 'Well, man, if I can't read the great American novel, I could never be a writer.' And this bothered me a great deal.

I have no literary fears.

I think at first I didn't tell anyone I was writing something because I found so tedious the people who did.

When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.

I had a period where I thought I might not be good enough to publish.

If you make your living writing, and you can't write anything, it's over. It's very frightening.

But if I worried too much about publishers' expectations, I'd probably paralyze myself and not be able to write anything.

I once read Updike after writing a first draft, and I wanted to put my own book on the fire. I've since learned to read utter crap while I'm writing: pulp is the thing.

Like my hero Virginia Woolf, I do lack confidence. I always find that the novel I'm finishing, even if it's turned out fairly well, is not the novel I had in my mind. I think a lot of writers must negotiate this, and if they don't admit it, they're not being honest.

I'm not a writer. I'm not smart. I couldn't possibly even write my own story.

I suspect that writer's block afflicts mainly people who have some stable and ample source of income outside of writing. So far it hasn't been a problem.

If you're too scared to put your dreams, thoughts, desires, fantasies on paper and share them with the world, then being an author isn't the right career for you.